[real-eyes] Fw: [CCB-L] Fwd: [acb-l] His courage knows no darkness
- From: "Karen Shrawder" <kshrawder@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <real-eyes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 2 Dec 2007 22:43:05 -0800
Hi! I don't typically forward articles like this to lists like this one,
but I wanted you all to see this. Although I don't know the man featured in
the article, I work closely with the staff at the program mentioned at
Junior Blind of America, and I know the mobility instructor. I think this
is one of the better written newspaper articles.
With a smile,
Karen
----- Original Message -----
From: "Andy Baracco" <wq6r@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ccb-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2007 10:05 PM
Subject: [CCB-L] Fwd: [acb-l] His courage knows no darkness
>
>
> Los Angeles Times, USA
> Sunday, November 11, 2007
>
> His courage knows no darkness
>
> By Steve Lopez
>
> He was a soldier in Iraq and he's a soldier now, shoulders squared and
> head held high on a street corner in Santa Fe Springs at 6:30 a.m.,
> waiting
> for a bus with his guide dog, Charley.
>
> Sgt. Maj. Jesse Acosta's hat says "Army." His green jacket says
> "Military
> Order Purple Heart. Combat Wounded." Dark shades conceal his prosthetic
> eyes.
>
> Better to fight the enemy on distant shores, the argument goes, than
> fight the enemy here. But that doesn't mean the war doesn't eventually
> come
> home. For Acosta, a 50-year-old gas company employee with a wife, four
> children and three grandchildren, what happened in Iraq will permanently
> complicate his life.
>
> "OK, we're going to take the 62 to the 108," says Felicia Echeverria, an
> orientation and mobility trainer with Junior Blind of America who is
> teaching Acosta how to travel by bus.
>
> Echeverria has been working with Acosta since February, helping him
> adapt
> to 24-hour darkness.
>
> "He's amazing," she says, telling me she hasn't had many students with
> his
> courage and determination. He has already graduated from white cane to
> German shepherd, and now he's making his first attempt to ride a bus with
> his new dog and report for computer and GPS training at Junior Blind
> headquarters in the Southwest Los Angeles area.
>
> "Forward," Acosta commands when the bus door opens.
>
> Charley sets a paw on the first step of the bus. Acosta, with a firm
> grip
> on the dog's harness, dangles a foot off the curb and searches the empty
> space between sidewalk and bus.
>
> The move is daunting. It's a short step, but it's also a leap of faith,
> with invisible geometry to negotiate. Acosta is balanced on one foot, dog
> tugging, passengers waiting and watching.
>
> With Charley's help, Acosta finds his way. He's up the stairs and
> telling
> the bus driver to please announce his transfer stop when they get to it.
> He
> asks her if there's an open seat on the left or the right, and looking in
> her rear-view mirror, she gets it wrong. Acosta is about to sit in
> someone's
> lap when the passenger tells him the open seat is on his right, not his
> left.
>
> He sits down, relieved, pulls Charley back out of the aisle and takes a
> breath. Everyone on the bus is watching. When you're blind, Echeverria
> says,
> you lose your privacy.
>
> The driver forgets to tell Acosta his stop is next, so Echeverria fills
> the gap.
>
> "I guess I better get used to this," he says without a trace of
> self-pity.
> This is a man who lifts weights every morning in the backyard and still
> has
> a military bearing and sense of purpose.
>
> The transfer is clean. Acosta doesn't trip or bump into any poles, as
> he's
> done more than once. He has to get this down cold, he says, because early
> next year he'll go back to work with the Southern California Gas Co.,
> traveling by bus to Downey. His days of house calls as a customer service
> rep are done, but the company has told him it will find something else for
> him.
>
> Bumping along on Slauson, I ask Acosta why he did it. Why, in 2002, did
> he
> re-enlist in the Army Reserve, as he had done previously after seven years
> of active duty following high school? Was it Sept. 11?
>
> "No, not really. I'm a warrior, and I still had a lot left in me."
>
> The call to duty came in the spring of 2005, with deployment to Iraq in
> late October. His wife, Connie, had trouble with it, proud of her husband
> but tired of sharing him with the Army. He told her it was a safe
> assignment -- a logistics and supply operation at Camp Anaconda along the
> Euphrates River near Balad, Iraq.
>
> "Little did I know they called Anaconda 'Mortaritaville,' " Acosta says.
>
> The mortars flew into the base every day. Then a first sergeant, he
> commanded 43 soldiers and routinely ordered them to dive for cover. He was
> doing just that Jan. 16, 2006, when he was hit. A shard of shrapnel ripped
> through his left eye, destroyed the nerve that controls taste and smell,
> nicked his brain, then took out his right eye.
>
> "They say I was crawling around on the ground, shouting orders," says
> Acosta, who remembers nothing. Only later did he learn that surgeons spent
> more than seven hours trying to save him. Then he was flown to Germany for
> more treatment.
>
> "I got a call from the doctor in Germany," Connie says. "He said, 'You
> know, I tried to get him to where he would ever see light again.' He cried
> with me -- the doctor. He said, 'I'm sorry, but he'll never be able to see
> again.' "
>
> Several surgeries followed, with more to come. Acosta's palate and
> several
> teeth were blown out of his head, and doctors have taken bone from his hip
> to rebuild the palate. When he eats a hamburger, he puts familiar textures
> together with memories of what cheese and mustard tasted like. "I try to
> savor it," he says.
>
> "I hope it was worth it, Mr. Bush," says Echeverria, who has a tear in
> her
> eye.
>
> But Acosta doesn't engage. He says he believed in the cause when he
> re-enlisted, and even now, traveling across the city in eternal
> darkness --
> and weighted, perhaps, with a touch of guilt for the sacrifice his wife
> and
> family must make -- he doesn't question his service.
>
> What he does question, his voice taking on an edge, is the quality of
> care
> he received after coming home. Walter Reed Army Medical Center released
> him
> too soon, he said, and he was sent to a Palo Alto rehab center for the
> blind
> while still reeling from the brain injury.
>
> "I received no care whatsoever coming back to the U.S.," he says,
> exaggerating only a little as he describes it. "You come back from the
> battlefield, you can't eat, and if not for older vets saying, 'Hey, kid,
> you've got a plate of food in front of you,' I wouldn't have known it."
>
> He was so depressed, he began wishing the surgeons hadn't saved him.
> That
> piece of shrapnel could have hit almost anywhere else on his body and
> caused
> less damage. How could it have been so perfectly angled to take both eyes
> and prevent him from ever seeing his wife and children again?
>
> "Every day I had massive headaches from my injuries, and I didn't even
> have access to staff. Nothing. If you needed them before 8 a.m. or after 4
> p.m., forget it, they were gone. They expected me to get on with my life.
>
> "Who sent me here from Walter Reed like that? I had to seek my own
> medical
> care, believe it or not. I told them I was leaving Palo Alto and they
> said,
> 'You can't do that.' I said, 'Watch me.' "
>
> Acosta says his new mission is to advocate for injured vets.
>
> "I've learned enough about the system to help them figure things out,"
> he
> says, and he's already begun networking, using VA sources and other
> contacts.
>
> They shouldn't have to figure it out, I tell him. He made the sacrifice,
> and the care should be there, period.
>
> "I know," he says. But with Charley at his feet, and with some
> passengers
> listening in, I can tell he's done with that subject.
>
> He does credit the West Los Angeles VA with referring him to the
> nonprofit
> Junior Blind ( www.juniorblind.org), where, for the first time, he
> believed
> he could rebuild his life. He was inspired by such staffers as Bert Borja
> and Les Subotnick, both blind, who are showing him how to read books and
> write letters with voice-assisted software.
>
> A director named Ken Metz, blind since birth, is already taking Acosta
> around to serve as a motivational speaker to other visually impaired
> people.
>
> It's almost 9 a.m. when the 108 stops at Alviso Avenue. Sgt. Maj. Acosta
> and his dog Charley get off the bus, cross the intersection and turn north
> for a two-block walk. They're getting the rhythm down, marching at a good
> clip now, with Echeverria marveling at Acosta's discipline and
> determination.
>
> Last March, he ran the Los Angeles Marathon with his 14-year-old
> daughter,
> Brittany. She was the one most devastated by his injury, and he wanted to
> prove to her that he still has a lot left in him.
>
> "I don't want anyone to do anything for me," Acosta had told me on the
> bus
> when I asked why he doesn't ask his wife to drive him to these training
> sessions. "If I have to bounce off every pole and fall off every curb,
> that's what I'll do."
>
> steve.lopez@xxxxxxxxxxx
>
>
>
> http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-lopez11nov11,1,4436177,full.column?coll=la-headlines-pe-california&ctrack=1&cset=true
> cried
> with me -- the doctor. He said, 'I'm sorry, but he'll never be able to see
> again.' "
>
> Several surgeries followed, with more to come. Acosta's palate and
> several
> teeth were blown out of his head, and doctors have taken bone from his hip
> to rebuild the palate. When he eats a hamburger, he puts familiar textures
> together with memories of what cheese and mustard tasted like. "I try to
> savor it," he says.
>
> "I hope it was worth it, Mr. Bush," says Echeverria, who has a tear in
> her
> eye.
>
> But Acosta doesn't engage. He says he believed in the cause when he
> re-enlisted, and even now, traveling across the city in eternal
> darkness --
> and weighted, perhaps, with a touch of guilt for the sacrifice his wife
> and
> family must make -- he doesn't question his service.
>
> What he does question, his voice taking on an edge, is the quality of
> care
> he received after coming home. Walter Reed Army Medical Center released
> him
> too soon, he said, and he was sent to a Palo Alto rehab center for the
> blind
> while still reeling from the brain injury.
>
> "I received no care whatsoever coming back to the U.S.," he says,
> exaggerating only a little as he describes it. "You come back from the
> battlefield, you can't eat, and if not for older vets saying, 'Hey, kid,
> you've got a plate of food in front of you,' I wouldn't have known it."
>
> He was so depressed, he began wishing the surgeons hadn't saved him.
> That
> piece of shrapnel could have hit almost anywhere else on his body and
> caused
> less damage. How could it have been so perfectly angled to take both eyes
> and prevent him from ever seeing his wife and children again?
>
> "Every day I had massive headaches from my injuries, and I didn't even
> have access to staff. Nothing. If you needed them before 8 a.m. or after 4
> p.m., forget it, they were gone. They expected me to get on with my life.
>
> "Who sent me here from Walter Reed like that? I had to seek my own
> medical
> care, believe it or not. I told them I was leaving Palo Alto and they
> said,
> 'You can't do that.' I said, 'Watch me.' "
>
> Acosta says his new mission is to advocate for injured vets.
>
> "I've learned enough about the system to help them figure things out,"
> he
> says, and he's already begun networking, using VA sources and other
> contacts.
>
> They shouldn't have to figure it out, I tell him. He made the sacrifice,
> and the care should be there, period.
>
> "I know," he says. But with Charley at his feet, and with some
> passengers
> listening in, I can tell he's done with that subject.
>
> He does credit the West Los Angeles VA with referring him to the
> nonprofit
> Junior Blind ( www.juniorblind.org), where, for the first time, he
> believed
> he could rebuild his life. He was inspired by such staffers as Bert Borja
> and Les Subotnick, both blind, who are showing him how to read books and
> write letters with voice-assisted software.
>
> A director named Ken Metz, blind since birth, is already taking Acosta
> around to serve as a motivational speaker to other visually impaired
> people.
>
> It's almost 9 a.m. when the 108 stops at Alviso Avenue. Sgt. Maj. Acosta
> and his dog Charley get off the bus, cross the intersection and turn north
> for a two-block walk. They're getting the rhythm down, marching at a good
> clip now, with Echeverria marveling at Acosta's discipline and
> determination.
>
>
>
>
>
> --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
> 73 years of serving the blind of California, we are the California Council
> of the Blind.
>
> Please support the California Council of the Blind by using
> www.ccbnet.gttrends.com
> for your travel needs. 50% of the commissions from your travel purchases
> will be donated to CCB.
>
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "California Council of the Blind" group.
> To post to this group, send email to CCB-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
> CCB-L-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> For more options, visit this group at
> http://groups.google.com/group/CCB-L?hl=en
> -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
>
To subscribe or to leave the list, or to set other subscription options, go to
www.freelists.org/list/real-eyes
Other related posts:
- » [real-eyes] Fw: [CCB-L] Fwd: [acb-l] His courage knows no darkness
