thedrifter
02-23-09, 08:56 AM
Woodworkers Lend Skills to Injured Soldiers
Program Brings Personalized Canes to Wounded
By Michael Laris
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 22, 2009; C04
C.A. Savoy has gotten too good at making canes.
"There's a need. If there wasn't, we wouldn't be turning them," said Savoy, a master woodworker from Fairfax County. "When the kids stop coming home wounded, we're out of business. And that can't come soon enough."
Army Maj. Joe Claburn, 32, stopped outside a dining room at Walter Reed Army Medical Center yesterday to pick up his cane. Burned along the side is his nickname, "Crazy Joe." That's what Pakistani soldiers dubbed him in 2001. They taught him a few phrases in Urdu before the invasion of Afghanistan, and one that he used for a while before he knew just what he was saying: "I'm a crazy man."
It stuck.
Woodworkers from across the country carve and personalize canes with soldiers' names, descriptions of combat tours, dates of wounds and, sometimes, the names of fellow soldiers who died, burned into the wood. Carved eagles top them off.
Late last year, Claburn's parachute got twisted after he leapt from a plane over Germany. He and German commandos were preparing for a low-altitude jump into Afghanistan. Instead, the elite parachuting instructor was falling toward the earth. Half a page of bones were broken when he hit, starting with his right foot and moving through his pelvis. He said he thinks the tree he fell through, while he wore his heavy gear, saved his life by slightly breaking his fall. Although he said his doctors gave him 30 percent odds of walking again, he gave up his wheelchair on his birthday this month.
"The fact that I can use this cane is really important to me. It kind of shows my progression," Claburn said. But what he wants is no cane at all. The carved wood "is really a symbol of the next thing that I have to overcome," he said.
Hank Cloutier, a retired Air Force flight engineer who spent decades managing operations at Dulles International Airport, gathers requests for canes from the injured, then helps get them to volunteers nationwide. He also handles deliveries and teaches carving to soldiers to help lighten the monotony of recovery.
Many want to start big.
"A lot of the guys say, 'Maybe I can get around to carving an eagle,' " Cloutier said.
Sgt. 1st Class Milton Siave, 53, an Army combat engineer whose job included dismantling improvised bombs in Afghanistan, has started with a boot. It's for his son, who went to the Citadel military college in South Carolina, and it's almost finished.
"It's a good therapy," Siave said. "Nothing bothers you."
Cloutier burned "16 NOV 06 Kandahar" onto Siave's cane, which the soldier picked up yesterday and gently placed in his motorized wheelchair. That was the date Siave's Humvee was hit by a roadside bomb while he was on patrol.
"I got blown out of the vehicle. I broke my back, my neck, crushed my chest," Siave said. "That was my third deployment. That was my lucky day."
Last week, Savoy chipped away at a whirling 37-inch-long block of maple with a two-inch-wide gouge. It's a giant curved blade that he handles with the confidence of a surgeon and the panache of a pastry chef.
"That's not what everybody would use. That's a man-sized tool," said Savoy, standing in a buddy's backyard woodshop in Fairfax last week.
With a grinding, clacking roar that sent wood curls flying, Savoy continued tapering his block down to a sleek core, measuring seven-eighths of an inch at the base and gradually reaching 1 3/4 inches.
"You are watching the master. Nobody has turned more canes than him," said Peter Ward, a friend, who carves heads for the effort, known as the Eagle Cane Project.
As Savoy was getting close to finishing at the lathe, he hit a bit of trouble.
"Whoa, did you see that puppy jump?" Ward said.
Savoy had momentarily leaned in a little hard with the gouge, but soon everything was smooth again. He sanded the finished product and handed it off to Ward, who will finish it and burn in the next name.
"When they figured out they can use their hobby to help guys out, or do something, they got together and decided to make these and started handing them out," said Sgt. Steven Kiernan, 21, who followed his uncle and grandfather into the Marines. His grandfather was a prisoner of war during World War II for four years. "It's pretty cool, you know?"
Kiernan was stationed for a month and a half in Fallujah, where his unit lived with the Iraqi police. His foot patrol was caught in a roadside bomb blast. The cane he picked up yesterday has a purple heart on it.
Recovery has come in stages.
"Once you get your strength, your legs are good, and they get you your prosthetics, then you get up on those," he said. In December, he went skiing in Colorado. "It took about two days to figure out how to do it. Once you get it down, you can turn pretty easy," he said.
He's planning to study history and politics at community college in Virginia and hopes to transfer to Georgetown.
"The goal for everyone is to get away from a cane and not use anything. I'm almost there right now," Kiernan said.
Ellie
Program Brings Personalized Canes to Wounded
By Michael Laris
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 22, 2009; C04
C.A. Savoy has gotten too good at making canes.
"There's a need. If there wasn't, we wouldn't be turning them," said Savoy, a master woodworker from Fairfax County. "When the kids stop coming home wounded, we're out of business. And that can't come soon enough."
Army Maj. Joe Claburn, 32, stopped outside a dining room at Walter Reed Army Medical Center yesterday to pick up his cane. Burned along the side is his nickname, "Crazy Joe." That's what Pakistani soldiers dubbed him in 2001. They taught him a few phrases in Urdu before the invasion of Afghanistan, and one that he used for a while before he knew just what he was saying: "I'm a crazy man."
It stuck.
Woodworkers from across the country carve and personalize canes with soldiers' names, descriptions of combat tours, dates of wounds and, sometimes, the names of fellow soldiers who died, burned into the wood. Carved eagles top them off.
Late last year, Claburn's parachute got twisted after he leapt from a plane over Germany. He and German commandos were preparing for a low-altitude jump into Afghanistan. Instead, the elite parachuting instructor was falling toward the earth. Half a page of bones were broken when he hit, starting with his right foot and moving through his pelvis. He said he thinks the tree he fell through, while he wore his heavy gear, saved his life by slightly breaking his fall. Although he said his doctors gave him 30 percent odds of walking again, he gave up his wheelchair on his birthday this month.
"The fact that I can use this cane is really important to me. It kind of shows my progression," Claburn said. But what he wants is no cane at all. The carved wood "is really a symbol of the next thing that I have to overcome," he said.
Hank Cloutier, a retired Air Force flight engineer who spent decades managing operations at Dulles International Airport, gathers requests for canes from the injured, then helps get them to volunteers nationwide. He also handles deliveries and teaches carving to soldiers to help lighten the monotony of recovery.
Many want to start big.
"A lot of the guys say, 'Maybe I can get around to carving an eagle,' " Cloutier said.
Sgt. 1st Class Milton Siave, 53, an Army combat engineer whose job included dismantling improvised bombs in Afghanistan, has started with a boot. It's for his son, who went to the Citadel military college in South Carolina, and it's almost finished.
"It's a good therapy," Siave said. "Nothing bothers you."
Cloutier burned "16 NOV 06 Kandahar" onto Siave's cane, which the soldier picked up yesterday and gently placed in his motorized wheelchair. That was the date Siave's Humvee was hit by a roadside bomb while he was on patrol.
"I got blown out of the vehicle. I broke my back, my neck, crushed my chest," Siave said. "That was my third deployment. That was my lucky day."
Last week, Savoy chipped away at a whirling 37-inch-long block of maple with a two-inch-wide gouge. It's a giant curved blade that he handles with the confidence of a surgeon and the panache of a pastry chef.
"That's not what everybody would use. That's a man-sized tool," said Savoy, standing in a buddy's backyard woodshop in Fairfax last week.
With a grinding, clacking roar that sent wood curls flying, Savoy continued tapering his block down to a sleek core, measuring seven-eighths of an inch at the base and gradually reaching 1 3/4 inches.
"You are watching the master. Nobody has turned more canes than him," said Peter Ward, a friend, who carves heads for the effort, known as the Eagle Cane Project.
As Savoy was getting close to finishing at the lathe, he hit a bit of trouble.
"Whoa, did you see that puppy jump?" Ward said.
Savoy had momentarily leaned in a little hard with the gouge, but soon everything was smooth again. He sanded the finished product and handed it off to Ward, who will finish it and burn in the next name.
"When they figured out they can use their hobby to help guys out, or do something, they got together and decided to make these and started handing them out," said Sgt. Steven Kiernan, 21, who followed his uncle and grandfather into the Marines. His grandfather was a prisoner of war during World War II for four years. "It's pretty cool, you know?"
Kiernan was stationed for a month and a half in Fallujah, where his unit lived with the Iraqi police. His foot patrol was caught in a roadside bomb blast. The cane he picked up yesterday has a purple heart on it.
Recovery has come in stages.
"Once you get your strength, your legs are good, and they get you your prosthetics, then you get up on those," he said. In December, he went skiing in Colorado. "It took about two days to figure out how to do it. Once you get it down, you can turn pretty easy," he said.
He's planning to study history and politics at community college in Virginia and hopes to transfer to Georgetown.
"The goal for everyone is to get away from a cane and not use anything. I'm almost there right now," Kiernan said.
Ellie