Active Duty Sgt. Tim Gustafson prepares to battle the slopes of
Vail, Colo.
Photo by Cary Jobe |
It’s a classic alpine evening—the sky turning from pale blue to pink
to vibrant orange—as Melissa Stockwell steps outside into a light evening
breeze on the porch at Vail’s Adventure Ridge. “Girls, get out here!”
she calls back inside to the banquet room. “You’ll die to see this
sunset!” Retired 1st Lt. Stockwell, 26, who became America’s first
female combat amputee when she lost her leg to an improvised explosive device
in Iraq two years ago, takes nothing for granted these days—certainly not
beautiful mountain sunsets.
Stockwell is among 23 amputee soldiers who participated last spring in the
third annual Vail Veterans Ski Weekend. The event was conceived and organized
by Cheryl Jensen, wife of Vail Resorts senior executive Bill Jensen, after she
visited Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where soldiers typically spend 6 to 12
months recovering from injuries. “That first visit was life-changing for
me. I knew I had to get these brave young men and women on snow, but I didn’t
know how to do it,” she says.
Then she met Army Major David Rozelle, who, one year after an anti-tank mine
blew off his right foot in June 2003, became the first Iraq War amputee to return
to combat. Exuberantly positive and an avid skier, Rozelle, 33, now oversees Walter
Reed’s Amputee Care Center. He rallied the troops and Jensen rallied Vail
to host the first Ski Weekend in 2004. Only eight soldiers and their families
attended, but the change it made in their recoveries was immediate, intense and
lasting. Twenty-six-year-old Staff Sgt. Heath Calhoun—who had lost both
legs above the knee five months earlier—summed it up best in his parting
words to Jensen: “I don’t know why you did this for me, ma’am,
but you changed my life.”
Calhoun is not alone in those feelings. Skiing might be the single best therapeutic
activity for injured vets, says Kirk Bauer, executive director of Disabled Sports
USA (DSUSA), a group that promotes sports participation by the disabled. First,
gravity does much of the work, “mitigating a disability” like in no
other sport, Bauer says. Second, adaptive ski gear, always on the leading edge
of medical technology, now accommodates disabilities as severe as partial quadriplegia.
Lastly, skiing has a long tradition of adaptive instruction, which frequently
allows disabled skiers to power down the mountain on their first day. “You
often hear disabled skiers say that being on the slopes is the one time they feel
whole again,” Bauer says.
There’s an increasing need for adaptive ski programs these days. The
number of amputee soldiers is growing as battlefield care improves. “People
are living today who never would have lived in any prior war,” says Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who attended the Vail event. “The corollary
of that, obviously, is that you have a lot of people who are seriously wounded.
What they are doing today, after they’ve been so severely wounded, is also
new.” That includes skiing mere months after being injured, as a way to
accelerate recoveries and reclaim lives.
The Vail event provides each soldier and a companion with airfare, lodging,
instruction, use of the latest adaptive gear, and activities every night, culminating
in a firehouse dinner prepared and served by Vail’s firefighters.
Occupational therapist Harvey Naranjo knows almost all of the amputees who
have come through Walter Reed in recent years. Most are young and were extremely
active before their injuries. “Engaging the patients in higher-level activity
as soon as possible improves their rehabilitation,” he says. As for skiing:
“It’s an adrenaline rush. You need that in life.”
Naranjo helps determine who’s ready for that boost, based on a vet’s
recovery rate, motivation and morale. Most are barely 20 years old and newly injured.
 Healing
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld visits with soldiers at the Vail Veterans
Ski Weekend, calling the event a reflection of the "generosity of spirit
and compassion of the American people."
Photo by Cary Jobe |
Shrapnel from a grenade tore a hunk out of Marine Joe Kapacziewski’s
hip, damaged his right arm and nearly destroyed his lower right leg. “He
needed to turn a corner,” says Naranjo, who didn’t expect Kapacziewski
to get on snow, but wanted him to see the possibilities.
The injured Marine does get on snow, as it turns out. At this year’s
event, Ruth DeMuth, director of Vail’s Adaptive Ski School, helps him into
the bucket of a sled-like device called a bi-ski and takes him to the summit.
From there, Kapacziewski banks turns down Vail’s Back Bowls, pain-free for
the first time in nearly 6 months. Flying high, he beams: “This is the most
fun I’ve had since my injury.”
The skiing community fosters that fun nationwide. The Wounded Warrior Project,
in partnership with DSUSA, funds other skiing events and private outings for vets
throughout the country. “Our commitment is to provide them with recreational
opportunities throughout their recovery, then provide it back in their community
until it becomes a part of their lifestyle,” Bauer says.
Jensen plans to keep the Vail event small, yet extend its reach with a second
winter program, a summer option and new events for soldiers with brain and visual
injuries. “It’s one small way to thank the troops who have made such
tremendous sacrifices for us,” she says.
Rozelle predicts that more than a few veterans will look at the Colorado ski
trip as a dividing line in their postwar lives: “They’ll look back
on the Vail weekend in 30 years as the moment that they turned their therapy around,
focused less on healing and started focusing more on living.”
For more information on the Vail Veterans Ski Weekend, contact vailveteransprogram.com.
To find out more about the Wounded Warrior Disabled Sports Project and other
similar projects, go to dsusa.org.
