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  Home Page » News » Veterans Not Slowed By Injuries

Veterans not slowed by injuries

by Garrett Andrews
Herald Staff Writer The new buzz words for what Allyssum Stensen does are "therapeutic recreation."

"It's new, I like it," she said of the phrase. "That's what we do."

As a coordinator with the Adaptive Sports Association, Stensen helps facilitate athletic involvement for those residents whose disabilities make participation difficult or impossible.

With an office at Durango Mountain Resort at Purgatory, Stensen and an army of local volunteers provide equipment, coaching and support staff to help ensure everyone has access to the curative possibilities of winter sports.

The recreation, she and her staff provide; the therapy is up to the individual.

On Friday and Saturday, the program was honoring its founder with the 11th annual Dave Spencer Classic, a fundraising event and noncompetitive downhill competition, and in town were three injured veterans.

Thirty-four four and five-person teams each paid the $750 entry fee (and in many cases, more than that) and spent a few days taking runs in gauche ski costumes and trying to beat targeted personal and team run times.

The conditions were far from perfect Saturday; it had been warm enough recently for slush to take over the well-traveled areas under the chairlifts, cold enough for choppy ice patches to hide in the shadows. A sharp and steady breeze kept skiers from standing in one place for too long, but Nico Marcolongo had nothing to complain about.

"It's very peaceful and serene up there - you're going down and the wind's in your face, you're controlling your speed. There's none of the hustle-bustle," he said.

"I can tell you it really helps heal."

A Marine veteran and director of both the Challenged Athlete Foundation and the Buddy Bowl flag football charity, Marcolongo, suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder after a tour in Iraq. He has been in town since Tuesday, seeking the therapeutic effects of the mountain. Many of the veterans he works with were highly active before their injuries, and many aren't eager to be seen as helpless victims.

Marcolongo was here with two injured veterans, Anthony Smith and Michael Paul. All are believers in what Stensen calls therapeutic.

Smith, 42, knows about the challenges of therapy. He talked to the Herald about the road he's taken back from his injury.

At Alcorn State University in Mississippi, a 6-foot-1-inch, 230-pound Smith played both free safety and wide receiver for Tony Dungy's football program and ran track each spring. Guided by a strong family tradition of military service, he took on ROTC duties as well, and after college graduation in 1990 and a stint playing pro basketball for the Nuremburg Knights in Germany, began an 18-year career in the Army.

One night in Camp Taji, 60 miles north of Baghdad, between about 2 and 3 a.m., Smith's unit came under attack from a someone in a truck firing a shoulder-mounted rocket-propelled grenade.

He could feel the RPG pass through his hip on its way to contacting with and exploding against a wall behind him.

Four rounds passed through his body, but adrenaline kept him moving.

"I was trying to get my buddy to the bunker. I went to stand up, and that's when everything just gave way on me."

As he bled on the ground, he said he could feel entrails spilling from his torso. A dust cloud covered him and the body of his friend, Captain Bo Felder, which rested on top of him. Both were pronounced killed in action after the attack and put in body bags. He'd later learn that he had been carrying only the top half of Felder's body.

An observant medical worker noticed one of the soldiers still had life left in him. Smith awoke from a coma 62 days later. Nurses told him he'd been dead for 17 minutes.

"They were getting ready to tag me," he said.

The list of injuries Smith suffered in that attack is staggering. He forgets several entries the first time through.

Traumatic brain injury, trauma to his T7 vertebra, blindness in his right eye and loss of vision in his left, four fractures in his jaw. He lost an arm, a hip, a kidney, three-quarters of his right femur, most of the muscles in his upper right leg, and parts of his colon and small and large intestines.

And that's just the physical toll.

A mix-up also led to Smith getting a transfusion of B positive blood. His blood type is B negative. Now a Type 2 diabetic, Smith had to laugh off an offer of brownies made by an Adaptive Sports volunteer.

He talked about the long recovery process that began at Brook Army Medical Center in San Antonio, where pool and weightlifting therapy helped give him back his competitive edge. The efforts helped Smith get back to what Marcolongo calls his "fighting weight," somewhere near 210 pounds, after dipping as low as 155.

Swimming, something Smith never spent much time with before his injury, became a new focus. He and two teammates compete in triathlons. He started just doing the swimming leg as part of a three-man team. Now he's expanding to include what he calls "speed-walking." He said he loves messing with the heads of his more slender competitors.

"I pass folks when I'm swimming," Smith said. "When you see some guy swimming past you with one arm and one leg, it can get in your head. I'm like, 'You feeling Ok?'"It's all psychological. I use everything I can to win."

Smith laughs without much provocation and smiles when he talks about skiing.

"Two years, they told me I wouldn't walk. Now I'm skiing," he said.

He had time for one more run Saturday at the Dave Spencer Classic.

On the mountain, he hooks his arm to an outrigger forearm crutch, carries another in his left hand and balances on one leg - the other ski is "just there along for the ride," he said.

"I'm finding more things that I can do - I never did triathlons before my injury," he said. "It's better than sitting in a chair all day, wondering what you're going to do with your life."

gandrews@durangoherald.com