Triathletes Bell, Wellington conquer Clinton Park
Ironman triathletes swam, ran and biked their way through Clinton Park Sunday. Enlarge video
When next you experience a bad break and feel like sullying the planet with your sour, woe-is-me attitude, think about the life story of retired Maj. Anthony Smith, a story that includes his death four years ago.
There Smith sat Sunday, smiling and laughing that laugh of his, bringing up the mood of all around him, a couple of hours after he finished competing in Ironman 70.3 Kansas at Clinton Lake. He completed the swimming leg of the triathlon and did 30 miles of the biking course before being called back in because he didn’t meet the requisite time to finish the course.
In my book there wasn’t a bigger winner in town than Smith, 42, a native of Mississippi and resident of Arkansas.
It was April 24, 2004, when he was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in Iraq.
“I didn’t even know I died until folks told me,” said Smith, very much alive. “Most of the story I don’t remember. Most of the story is what I read in reports and what nurses told me. They thought I was dead so they placed me in a body bag. One of the nurses realized I was still breathing so she had me pulled out of the body bag. Then I flat-lined, and she resuscitated me, which was a good thing because my paper work said don’t resuscitate, but they couldn’t find my paper work. I’ll never put that on my paper work again.”
He let loose with his loud laugh and then detailed what the RPG did to him.
“It went straight through the right side of my body and caused a whole lot of damage,” said Smith, whose right arm now ends at the elbow. “The most visible one everybody sees is my arm, but it also caused loss of vision in my right eye, hearing in my right ear. I got a traumatic brain injury, got a lot of memory loss, post-traumatic stress, neurological damage, T-7 spinal chord injury, lost my right kidney, my large intestine. I don’t have a hip at all. I had my femur pulled into my pelvis, and my right leg is three inches shorter. I lost all my muscles in my (right) leg. I really don’t have any feeling in my leg until you get down by my knee.”
The 62 days he spent in a coma forced him to learn how to read and write all over again. He still is re-learning the information he absorbed on the way to his college degree from Alcorn State in mathematics and computer science.
“Calculus and differential equations used to be like clockwork to me,” he said. “I’m re-learning it. That’s what can get frustrating. You’ll be working a problem, and you know you know how to work it, and you get stuck and get migraines. You have to sit back and wait a minute, and it starts flowing again.”
How does he compete with his right leg so weakened?
“I’ve got a strong left leg,” he said.
Why does he compete?
“If you could see the looks on the faces of some of the disabled kids who see you out there performing, it lights up their whole life and motivates them to get out there and try, too,” he said. “You meet a lot of kids who are always picked on and don’t get to do a lot of stuff, so if they see you out there going through a lot of pain to accomplish your goals, they know they can accomplish those things too. My second-biggest reason is I have a good religious base. A lot of guys have said, ‘If I’m so religious, why did I get hurt?’ I always tell them there is a purpose in everything. I tell the kids, ‘I got hit by a rocket for you guys because you needed a representative, so God sent me to be your representative.’”
Smith represents Operation Rebound, a division of the Challenged Athletes Foundation. He said one of the biggest highlights of his weekend came Sunday when a pair of Kansas University assistant football coaches, defensive coordinator Clint Bowen and receivers coach David Beaty, came to watch him race on his bicycle.
“Clint Bowen took me through the whole new football facility Friday,” Smith said. “They’re great guys. I’ve been to a lot of different places and don’t get that big a welcome. A lot of times people say they’re going to come out and see you, but they don’t show up. Both of those guys showed up. I was shocked when I saw them. I said, ‘Y’all really came.’ Now when I see them playing on TV, I’m leaning KU.”
The Kansas football coaching staff, which behind the scenes does a lot of great things for the community, picked up another fan this weekend, and Smith, as he has a habit of doing, picked up a new legion of supporters.
For all the man has been through, he sure smiles a lot. You think maybe we could all learn a little something from him?
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Ada (anonymous) says…
We met this awesome, blessed man. His belief is as said in Philippians 4:13 which says "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." Anthony, definitely is an inspiration to all of us who think "I can't".