For the brave

Rising from the anger
20 years ago, the Coast Guard aircraft Christopher Devlin Young was in crashed. Young was paralyzed from the waist down.

"I spent those first couple of years being very angry and not knowing what to do, not knowing what kind of direction I wanted my life to be," says Young. "And thinking of myself as half a man, because I was paralyzed, didn’t realize there were things I could do."

Therapists sent Young to the very first National Disabled Veterans’ Winter Sports Clinic where he went skiing.

"I realized on my second turn on my first day that I had some control back," he says. "I had exhiliration, I had the adrenaline back in my life.  And I had something that could get me past the rough times."

It was also something that Young grew to love.  And now, he is the reigning World Cup Champion in the Mono Ski Super Giant Slalom. But he says the most important victory, for all disabled veterans, comes in the lesson this clinic teaches about independence.

"Use that energy, use that skill that we’ve learned to transfer back into our lives and make the wheel chair not the controlling factor in my life.  I control the wheel chair.  The wheel chair doesn’t control me anymore."

Instructor Rob Reynolds doesn’t use a chair at all.  At first glance, he seems to have no disabilities.   

But Reynolds is legally a paraplegic. He ruined his back on a parachute jump. "As a result of my L-5 injury, I had a spinal stimulator implant put into me with ledes put into my 12 area that send stimulation for the pain."

It wasn’t easy.  In the beginning, most sports were out of the question for Reynolds.

"I really took it hard at the beginning because I was very athletic and that was all gone at that point."

Like Christopher Young, Reynolds had never been skiing.  But 12 years ago he attended a National Disabled Veterans Winter Sports Clinic and he hasn’t looked back since.

Reynolds repeats the mantra: "It’s about the ability, not the disability."

And those are the words the 350 participants hear from instructors over and over.

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