Don’t Give Up, Give Back

By
Jeff Charlebois

I’ve performed at clubs, colleges and conferences all around the country, but I’d never felt as moved as when I spoke to soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. Veterans injured in Iraq and Afghanistan go there to be rehabilitated.  In a small way, performing for the brave men and women of the military made me feel as if I were serving my country.

There was nothing heroic about what happened to me: I was in a car accident in high school, broke my neck and became disabled.  It was a case of wrong place, wrong time.  But to voluntarily put oneself in harm’s way, knowing the potential danger, was another matter entirely.  My gift to them would be to offer a brief escape from the trauma they’d suffered:  For 15 minutes, they could sit back and laugh.  (Those too ill to join us at the show caught it on video monitors in their rooms.)
 
Dana Bowman served as emcee.  He brought me and motivational speaker John Siciliano along.  Dana is a double amputee who was named a Special Forces Soldier and a member of the Golden Knights, the elite parachute team of the U.S. Army.  His previous presentations at Walter Reed have all been well received.  Beyond frequent appearances there, he’s given more than 400 speeches over the last few years and has been featured in [I]Sports Illustrated, Reader’s Digest[I] and [I]People[I] magazines, and on such TV shows as [I]Dateline, A Current Affair[I] and [I]Real TV[I].

In 1994, Dana and Jose Aguillon, one of his Golden Knight teammates, were practicing a maneuver known as the “diamond track,” which calls for jumpers to fly away from each other for about a mile and then turn 180 degrees and swoop back in, crisscrossing in the sky. Dana and Jose had demonstrated the move many, many times without a problem, but that day, rather than crisscross, they slammed into one another at a speed of 300 miles per hour. Jose died instantly, while Dana’s legs were severed from his body, one above the knee and one below.

After his wounds healed, Dana became the U.S. Parachute Team’s lead speaker and recruiting commander. His motivational messages touch everyone who hears them, and demonstrate that people with physical challenges can continue to work and excel.

As Dana finished up, he turned the room over to John Siciliano, whom he’d met five years ago during one of his gigs.  John, too, is very energetic and pulls his audience into his world using his acting talent, along with a compelling Power Point presentation.

In high school, John and his friends left a restaurant one night and were blindsided by a car.  Although no one died, John awoke in the hospital with a neck brace and tube in his throat so that he could breathe. As he lay there, an eerie feeling overwhelmed him: