What Heroes are Made Of

Living in California was a bitter sweet experience for me. During my time there I met some really great, good hearted people who were native born Californians, but personally I found the government of that State to be quite restrictive, especially when it came to gun owners rights (California is the home state for Nancy Pelosi). I was reflecting last night about some of the things that I participated in during my time there, things that I was proud of accomplishing while residing in that State.

Please take a look at this video clip.

It was filmed at a surf camp that we did while I was in California, for combat veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, who received serious injuries during their deployment. Sadly, many of the young men had received spinal cord injuries, or became amputees due to those injuries that many had sustained from IED’s. David Mendez, who had recently returned from a tour of duty in Afghanistan himself, is the guy who shot the video, and worked extremely hard day and night in order to get the story told. David was raised in Florida, and had moved to Los Angeles to do film work. He is also an actor who seems to get cast a lot playing bad guys in Hollywood films and TV. I worked with David assisting him in getting around to certain locations that were hard to access, hauling him and his equipment around on the beach in my Jeep so that he could get additional footage for the film.

The Camp was made possible due to the efforts of Janis Roznowski, founder of Operation Comfort, and a local amputee surf instructor named Rodney Roller, as well as local surfer Scott Drawta and the support of local people and businesses.You can read more about the organization here.This was the second annual camp that was held there. A blurb about the first one can be found here.

It was a privilege and honor to work with these courageous young heroes for that week, and I will explain why I feel this way. The first morning of the camp, because I was in decent shape physically (Gun Shy likes to condition), I was assigned to transporting the young amputees down to the waters edge. The way that this is accomplished, is to assist the young men into a specially designed wheel chair that has balloon tires, and then physically push them through soft sand for quite a long distance, because it is low tide when we take them out to surf. I had my first surfer of the day, a young double amputee in the chair and I was working hard to get through the soft sand to the waters edge, while attempting to keep the front of the chair tilted back. The young soldier turned to me and said with a somewhat disappointed look “I am sorry sir that I can’t be of more assistance in helping you”. I quickly responded with “That’s okay son, you are here for R&R, and I will take care of it…no problem”. I turned away for a moment to wipe the tear from the corner of my eye that was forming, and then pushed onwards toward the beach with a renewed vigor and sense of purpose, while counting my blessings that I physically was able to push this wheelchair through the deep sand down to the beach. It really put all things for me into perspective quickly. All of the young men that I worked with at the camp had the same attitude as this young man, and I never once heard any of them ever complain, as they demonstrated their can do attitude on a daily basis. Please keep in mind that many of these young men had never surfed before, and the California water typically hovers in the 50’s temperature wise, and is cold even with a wet suit. This is the same cold California water that the West Coast Navy Seal’s Hell Week is notorious for. (the water in San Diego is actually warmer than the Central coast). Now that I am back in Florida, I hope to get involved with other camps run here that offers the same opportunity to our injured young soldiers and Marines returning from battle, because I feel that it is truly a worthwhile endeavor.

If you are interested in learning some more about the camp which is now a yearly event in California, there are some additional links here and also here.

Please pray for the sons and daughters of America, who serve in our military, and are deployed in regions where they are in harms way on a daily basis, that they all return home safely.