three days after the amputation,” Alice remembers, “I asked him if he was strong enough to get up and if he would like to go outside.”
“I said, ‘Well, just park the wheelchair right here and I’ll just watch you all playing on the swings,’” says John. “And when I saw that I could not get out of that chair and go over with John junior to the swing and the slide, I actually understood what it meant to be different—to be a changed individual. And I think that’s when the limitations started piling on me. I think I started to realize that I wasn’t going to the Olympic trials. This dream was over for me. I would never run again.”
“I heard John just crying,” remembers Alice. “Just crying. So I walked back over and John junior walked over and we just hugged him. And I think at that moment John really realized that his leg was gone.”
Having accepted his loss, John focused on rebuilding his life, attacking his therapy with the same dedication that had made him a world-class athlete.
John says, “In my mind, I was ready to start the recovery process. And I didn’t really know what to expect at that point. But I knew that whatever I had to do, I had to get strong again.”
Determined to strengthen his body, John began swimming. His competitive instincts soon took over. One year after his accident, John made the U.S. swim team and competed in the 1996 Paralympic Games in Atlanta.
John remembers, “That’s where I think the idea was sparked in my head to come back to the sport of my first love, track-and-field.”
John immediately started training to run in the 2000 Sydney Paralympic Games. His results, however, were not encouraging.
“I’d go out there and strap the leg on and run down the track. I was trying to get the rhythm and it just wasn’t coming.”
Alice remembers, “After a run, the skin would be gone on the inner part of his leg. And he would have large sores on it.”
John says, “And I said, ‘Well, maybe I can’t do this.’ The doubt started creeping in.”
But Alice and John made a pact that would help John get back out on the track.
Alice says, “I was learning to rollerblade and I had severely twisted my ankle. And I said, ‘I’m not getting back on another rollerblade.’”
Alice agreed to try rollerblading again if John would try running 100 meters.
John remembers, “She used the rollerblades to show me that if she could go back to it even though she was so scared of them, then I could get up there and get on my leg and run again as well.”
Alice says, “So we did it together. I rollerbladed the 100 and he ran for 100. And at that point I was excited. I could see his joy in it again.”
A few days later, John ran his first competitive race since losing his leg.
“It was the scariest thing I had ever done. I mean, I had no control. I saw the backs of almost every athlete out-there. And I was just fighting to stay upright, to stay balanced and not to fall, but at the same time, when I crossed that line I said to myself, You know, you just did it. You just ran against the best of the world here.”
Two weeks later, John qualified for the Disabled World Championships in the 100 meters and the long jump. Still, he knew he could do better.
“The leg was whipping around and it was not working with my body. I was actually fighting it. When I ran, I was landing on the top portion of the leg. And that was cutting into the inside groin area. So every time I landed, the pain was so bad that I felt like I was on fire.”
But someone was watching who would change John’s life forever: a prosthetic designer named Tom Guth.
Tom says, “His speed was incredible, fantastic, but his leg was just whipping to the side and going in all directions. And I thought, What a shame. This man has so much power, so much speed. If we could straighten his leg out and get him a good fit, he could probably be a gold medal winner.”
Using advanced technology at the RGP Prosthetic Research Center in San Diego, Tom designed a new state-of-the-art running-and-jumping prosthetic for John.
“The results were just phenomenal,” John remembers. “Two seconds had just come off of my time. And I felt my body come back to me again. It was an incredible feeling and I knew I was going to make the U.S. team for the Paralympic Games, so I could compete in Sydney, Australia.”
The first step was the qualifying trials.
John says, “I saw myself on that runway and the competitive spirit just came back. I thought, You know what to do, you’ve been in this position many times before, and you can do it.”
And he did.
John’s Olympic dreams had come true. In spite of all the suffering and hardship, he was competing once again.
“It was a dream come true,” John says. “And even though I’m not on the track as an able-bodied athlete, having the experience of playing at the Games is better. It’s been really fantastic to understand that you can push your body to another level.”
John posted a personal best in every event he competed in, winning a silver medal in the long jump and placing fifth in the 100- and 200-meter races.
Alice reflects, “I think what people can learn from John’s journey is that there is nothing that you can’t do. If you have determination, you can succeed at whatever you put your mind to.”
Ever since he was a young boy, Ron Greenfield dreamed of flying.
“My mom told me that from the time I could walk and talk, all I ever talked about was becoming a pilot,” says Ron.
Ron’s love of aeronautics grew stronger over the years. But it wasn’t until he was seventeen that his dream finally came true.
It was 1968, and the Vietnam War was in full swing. Ron enlisted, went through flight school, and began piloting the new Cobra Attack helicopter over the jungles of Vietnam.
“I was flying what we called mortar patrol,” explains Ron. “Mortar patrol is where we keep aircraft up all the time, waiting for either the North Vietnamese Army or the Vietcong to make mortar attacks on the U.S. troops. Once they’d fire the mortar, you could pinpoint it. And then you could quickly roll in, and fire rockets on that spot.”
On March 5, 1969, Ron was on a reconnaissance mission when his Cobra was hit by enemy gunfire. The helicopter was badly damaged, and began a steep dive into the jungle below.
“Apparently they hit my flight controls, because I couldn’t pull out of the dive,” says Ron. “We probably hit the trees at 200 or 250 miles an hour.”
“It looked like the jungle just opened up, we went into it, and it closed up,” remarks Ron. “You couldn’t even tell where we went in.”
The Cobra literally came apart in the crash, with only the cockpit remaining intact. Badly injured and bleeding, Ron managed to crawl out of the aircraft, but the excruciating
