Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
USA Today
November 21, 2006
Pg. 3C
Bomb attack took his leg, but couldn't shake his confidence
By Sal Ruibal, USA Today
MERIDIEN, Miss. — Kortney Clemons has every reason in the world to be angry.
On Feb. 21, 2005, the U.S. Army combat medic went to the aid of a fallen comrade whose Humvee had been blown off a dirt road outside of Baghdad by an insurgent's bomb. He prepared the wounded soldier for helicopter evacuation and soon heard the familiar “chop-chop-chop” as the aircraft approached.
Then came the loudest noise he'd ever heard. A second bomb killed three of his fellow medics and blew away Clemons' right leg from above the knee.
He was supposed to have been discharged from the Army and back home in Mississippi five days before the attack, but the Pentagon issued a “stop-loss” order keeping Clemons in Iraq.
Now he was leaving without his leg.
“I tried to stay awake,” he recalls. “I knew something had happened, but I didn't know what.”
When he awoke several hours and 2,000 miles later, the then 24-year-old Clemons was at the U.S. military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, with a crew of nurses and doctors cutting away his clothing and cleaning his skin with antibiotic wash.
He lapsed into unconsciousness again and later awoke in a hospital room, layers of blankets and sheets pulled up to his shoulders. Something seemed wrong. He could only see one foot poking up under the blankets.
“My cousin, who was in the military, came in and told me that I would see my family soon and that I needed to understand what had happened before they saw (me). ‘You have to be strong for them,' she said.
“I lifted up the blankets and for the first time looked down where my leg had been.”
Flash forward six months, and Clemons is nervously pacing on the grass next to the running track at the Brooke Army Medical Center hospital in San Antonio. His above-the-knee stump is encased in a carbon-fiber prosthetic leg with a metal flat-spring foot.
He bounces a few times to feel the pogo-stick effect of his running leg.
“I had tried it for a few strides before that moment, but I had never gone full speed,” he remembers. “I took off down the track, and it was the most wonderful feeling, the wind in my face, moving by my own power.”
Between those moments of combat terror and athletic elation, Clemons undertook a voyage of emotional discovery, examining his life in minute and painful detail.
“I had to reintroduce myself to myself,” he says with a shy laugh while digging his fork into a plate of fried catfish at the Cracker Barrel in his hometown of Meridien, Miss.
“When I was in the hospital, I thought I must have done something really bad in my life to deserve this. I went over everything that had happened to me, searching for a reason why God would want to take my leg.
“I came to the realization that he did this for a reason. He wanted me to make something more of myself. I had to lose my leg to find the real me.”
A few months after that uplifting first run, he became the first Iraq war veteran to qualify for the U.S. Paralympic Games. On July 1, the real Kortney Clemons became the national Paralympic champion in the “all-comers” 100-meter sprint, crossing the tape with a personal record of 15.61 seconds.
Clemons has always had a competitive streak.
His father, Mitch, remembers how his undersized son spent hours practicing his football moves in their backyard, battling imaginary opponents with a fierce focus.
“Because he was a smaller kid, he had to fight them off,” Mitch Clemons says. “If the receiver wanted to go to his left, he had to have enough upper body strength to make him go to the right.”
But at 5-9 and 125 pounds, he was too small for football, even at the community college level. Coaches were impressed with his speed and strength, but he needed size.
“It was really frustrating for me,” Clemons says. “I knew I could play.”
He left East Central (Miss.) Community College and joined the Army, hoping to become a pharmacist. Instead, he became a combat medic and went with the 1st Cavalry Division to fight in Iraq.
Clemons hasn't always triumphed in his battle to discover the larger meaning of his injury.
Although he pushed hard to adapt to life with one leg — attempting to walk a few days after he arrived at the military rehabilitation center in San Antonio — he often retreated into his room to avoid the constant reminders that he could no longer function as a “normal” man.
Out of curiosity, he traveled to Philadelphia for an Army-sponsored visit with a group of disabled powerlifters. Coach Teri Jordan of the Penn State Ability Athletics Program encouraged Clemons to give it a try.
He slid on to the weight bench and pushed his hands against the iron bar poised above his chest.
He pushed harder and in that moment he returned to those competitive days of high school football, the childhood practices in his backyard and his dreams of athletic achievement.
“It all came back at once,” he says. “I felt the power flow into me, the fight and the confidence. I was changed in that moment.”
Clemons says that moment was possible because of the encouragement of Jordan.
“I was so excited I couldn't sleep that night. I knew I could do this; I knew that I could accomplish great things.”
Jordan looks back at those days and says Clemons was ready to fly.
“Sometimes one door in life closes, but another one opens. And we just have to understand that God allows us to go through another door if we take that opportunity,” Jordan says. “I believe he has a very strong spiritual content, that he feels that God is helping him overcome a lot of things that he has experienced in life.”
Clemons is enrolled at Penn State, where he's studying recreation management and working out with the school's innovative adaptive sports team.
The move from hot and humid small-town Mississippi to four-season Pennsylvania and a campus with more than 42,000 students hasn't been easy for Clemons, but he's thrived in the atmosphere that includes a group of potential Paralympians who hope to qualify for the Beijing Games. Although he favors running on the track, he also has a shot at the Beijing Paralympics in power lifting.
“I'm not in this to beat other people,” he says. “I just want to set records. There are a lot of guys who have come back from Iraq like me. I want them to look at those records and see what is possible.
“I'm living proof that you can accomplish anything.”
The Clemons file
Name: Kortney Clemons
Born: June 23, 1980
Education: Graduate of The King's Academy, Meridien, Miss.; attended East Central (Miss.) Community College; attending Penn State
Family: Daughter, Daytriona, age 10
Career highlight: 2006 U.S. Paralympic 100 meters national champion
Success: 100 meters national champion, 2006 U.S. Paralympic Games; set U.S. Paralympic powerlifting record of 340 pounds (155-pound senior class), 2006 International Paralympic Committee (IPC) world championships at Busan, South Korea
Did you know? Clemons was the first Iraq War veteran to qualify for the U.S. Paralympic Games.
On staying positive: “I'm not bitter about my injury. Things happen for a reason, and my reason is to motivate and inspire others.”
November 21, 2006
Pg. 3C
Bomb attack took his leg, but couldn't shake his confidence
By Sal Ruibal, USA Today
MERIDIEN, Miss. — Kortney Clemons has every reason in the world to be angry.
On Feb. 21, 2005, the U.S. Army combat medic went to the aid of a fallen comrade whose Humvee had been blown off a dirt road outside of Baghdad by an insurgent's bomb. He prepared the wounded soldier for helicopter evacuation and soon heard the familiar “chop-chop-chop” as the aircraft approached.
Then came the loudest noise he'd ever heard. A second bomb killed three of his fellow medics and blew away Clemons' right leg from above the knee.
He was supposed to have been discharged from the Army and back home in Mississippi five days before the attack, but the Pentagon issued a “stop-loss” order keeping Clemons in Iraq.
Now he was leaving without his leg.
“I tried to stay awake,” he recalls. “I knew something had happened, but I didn't know what.”
When he awoke several hours and 2,000 miles later, the then 24-year-old Clemons was at the U.S. military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, with a crew of nurses and doctors cutting away his clothing and cleaning his skin with antibiotic wash.
He lapsed into unconsciousness again and later awoke in a hospital room, layers of blankets and sheets pulled up to his shoulders. Something seemed wrong. He could only see one foot poking up under the blankets.
“My cousin, who was in the military, came in and told me that I would see my family soon and that I needed to understand what had happened before they saw (me). ‘You have to be strong for them,' she said.
“I lifted up the blankets and for the first time looked down where my leg had been.”
Flash forward six months, and Clemons is nervously pacing on the grass next to the running track at the Brooke Army Medical Center hospital in San Antonio. His above-the-knee stump is encased in a carbon-fiber prosthetic leg with a metal flat-spring foot.
He bounces a few times to feel the pogo-stick effect of his running leg.
“I had tried it for a few strides before that moment, but I had never gone full speed,” he remembers. “I took off down the track, and it was the most wonderful feeling, the wind in my face, moving by my own power.”
Between those moments of combat terror and athletic elation, Clemons undertook a voyage of emotional discovery, examining his life in minute and painful detail.
“I had to reintroduce myself to myself,” he says with a shy laugh while digging his fork into a plate of fried catfish at the Cracker Barrel in his hometown of Meridien, Miss.
“When I was in the hospital, I thought I must have done something really bad in my life to deserve this. I went over everything that had happened to me, searching for a reason why God would want to take my leg.
“I came to the realization that he did this for a reason. He wanted me to make something more of myself. I had to lose my leg to find the real me.”
A few months after that uplifting first run, he became the first Iraq war veteran to qualify for the U.S. Paralympic Games. On July 1, the real Kortney Clemons became the national Paralympic champion in the “all-comers” 100-meter sprint, crossing the tape with a personal record of 15.61 seconds.
Clemons has always had a competitive streak.
His father, Mitch, remembers how his undersized son spent hours practicing his football moves in their backyard, battling imaginary opponents with a fierce focus.
“Because he was a smaller kid, he had to fight them off,” Mitch Clemons says. “If the receiver wanted to go to his left, he had to have enough upper body strength to make him go to the right.”
But at 5-9 and 125 pounds, he was too small for football, even at the community college level. Coaches were impressed with his speed and strength, but he needed size.
“It was really frustrating for me,” Clemons says. “I knew I could play.”
He left East Central (Miss.) Community College and joined the Army, hoping to become a pharmacist. Instead, he became a combat medic and went with the 1st Cavalry Division to fight in Iraq.
Clemons hasn't always triumphed in his battle to discover the larger meaning of his injury.
Although he pushed hard to adapt to life with one leg — attempting to walk a few days after he arrived at the military rehabilitation center in San Antonio — he often retreated into his room to avoid the constant reminders that he could no longer function as a “normal” man.
Out of curiosity, he traveled to Philadelphia for an Army-sponsored visit with a group of disabled powerlifters. Coach Teri Jordan of the Penn State Ability Athletics Program encouraged Clemons to give it a try.
He slid on to the weight bench and pushed his hands against the iron bar poised above his chest.
He pushed harder and in that moment he returned to those competitive days of high school football, the childhood practices in his backyard and his dreams of athletic achievement.
“It all came back at once,” he says. “I felt the power flow into me, the fight and the confidence. I was changed in that moment.”
Clemons says that moment was possible because of the encouragement of Jordan.
“I was so excited I couldn't sleep that night. I knew I could do this; I knew that I could accomplish great things.”
Jordan looks back at those days and says Clemons was ready to fly.
“Sometimes one door in life closes, but another one opens. And we just have to understand that God allows us to go through another door if we take that opportunity,” Jordan says. “I believe he has a very strong spiritual content, that he feels that God is helping him overcome a lot of things that he has experienced in life.”
Clemons is enrolled at Penn State, where he's studying recreation management and working out with the school's innovative adaptive sports team.
The move from hot and humid small-town Mississippi to four-season Pennsylvania and a campus with more than 42,000 students hasn't been easy for Clemons, but he's thrived in the atmosphere that includes a group of potential Paralympians who hope to qualify for the Beijing Games. Although he favors running on the track, he also has a shot at the Beijing Paralympics in power lifting.
“I'm not in this to beat other people,” he says. “I just want to set records. There are a lot of guys who have come back from Iraq like me. I want them to look at those records and see what is possible.
“I'm living proof that you can accomplish anything.”
The Clemons file
Name: Kortney Clemons
Born: June 23, 1980
Education: Graduate of The King's Academy, Meridien, Miss.; attended East Central (Miss.) Community College; attending Penn State
Family: Daughter, Daytriona, age 10
Career highlight: 2006 U.S. Paralympic 100 meters national champion
Success: 100 meters national champion, 2006 U.S. Paralympic Games; set U.S. Paralympic powerlifting record of 340 pounds (155-pound senior class), 2006 International Paralympic Committee (IPC) world championships at Busan, South Korea
Did you know? Clemons was the first Iraq War veteran to qualify for the U.S. Paralympic Games.
On staying positive: “I'm not bitter about my injury. Things happen for a reason, and my reason is to motivate and inspire others.”