Sandpoint's Ret. Army Sgt. Brandon Adam: PGA Special on CBS

As promised on yesterday's post, I'm honored to share yet another story of my former English student, Ret. Army Sgt. Brandon Adam who now lives in Colorado.  

Brandon and his family have participated in a segment of a PGA special, airing this Saturday at 11 a.m. PDT or 2 p.m Eastern on CBS. 

Since his injuries, incurred from an IED explosion in Iraq in 2007, Brandon has continued to amaze and inspire his family, friends and fellow warriors by taking on continued challenges, stemming from those injuries, and with his desire to live a full, satisfying life. 

This morning, I've included the press release explaining Saturday's CBS special. Also, you can read a column I wrote with Brandon while he was undergoing therapy in San Antonio, Tex., in 2007.  

Finally---from Brandon himself in a note sent to me yesterday afternoon---you'll read his perspective about the upcoming television special and about the game of golf. 

 A very special thanks to Mallory Crosland, director of Production and Programming for PGA America, for sending me the materials for this hometown promotion of Brandon and the CBS special.  

As always, thanks to Brandon for his willingness to share and for his continued inspiring example.

I hope you enjoy the package below, that you'll mark the time and date for Saturday's program so you can see Brandon and his family.  Also, please pass this information along to any and all. 

Brandon with Ft. Carson golf instructor Paul Surniak.  Brandon was Paul's first disabled golfer. 

                                                                                    --Photo Courtesy MontanaPhotoClient

CBS to Air “PGA REACH: Impacting Lives Through Golf” Special May 16

World Golf Hall of Fame Member Ernie Els, Baseball Hall of Famer Ozzie Smith

and Inspiring PGA Professionals among those Featured

PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. (May 12, 2015) – CBS, in partnership with the PGA of America, will broadcast an hour-long network special, “PGA REACH: Impacting Lives Through Golf.” The program details how PGA REACH, the charitable foundation of the PGA, has made a difference for people across the country. 

The documentary-style program will air on Sat., May 16, from 2-3 p.m. ET. The show will follow several individuals, who under the guidance of PGA Professionals have been welcomed into the game through PGA REACH programming.
 

“PGA REACH is designed to introduce the game of golf and its vast attributes to boys and girls from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds, as well as military veterans and individuals with cognitive and physical challenges,” said PGA President Derek Sprague. “Through programs implemented by PGA Professionals across our 41 PGA Sections, we are able to make a difference by using golf to promote family values, health, fitness, and most importantly, fun.”

The stories will feature individuals who have utilized golf to cope with serious illnesses and injuries, as well as enjoy the excitement of the game for the first time:

·         Working together with the St. Louis Veterans Affairs Medical Center, PGA HOPE (Helping Our Patriots Everywhere) created a progressive and therapeutic year-round military golf program that introduced more than 70 veterans to the game in 2014. The show features the Gateway PGA Section, which pioneered PGA REACH programming through their education initiative to keep at-risk kids in school, and whose members are dedicated to PGA HOPE and our nation’s veterans. National Baseball Hall of Fame member and Gateway PGA REACH Foundation President Ozzie Smith takes part in this charitable outreach.

·         PGA Professional Paul Surniak of Cheyenne Shadows Golf Club at Fort Carson, in

Colorado, instructs Ret. Sgt. Brandon Adam, a double-amputee and accomplished X Games skier, who struggled with assimilation after serving in Iraq. Through Surniak’s coaching and adaptive equipment, Brandon is now able to experience the mental, social, and physical benefits of golf.

·         In Florence, Kentucky, PGA Master Professional and World of Golf General Manager Ralph Landrum is one of the first PGA Professionals to introduce PGA Junior League Golf to youth at the Boys Camp; Girls Clubs of Greater Cincinnati. The PGA Junior League Golf program is an organized team playing experience for kids 13 and under and the key youth initiative of PGA REACH. The program has grown exponentially, with participation rates doubling from 2013 to 2014. PGA Professional Jack Dean, a 2014 PGA Junior League Golf Regional Captain of the Year, also is shown for his work in bringing together youth from four rural counties across Middle Georgia.
 

·         Joshua Deer, 20, of Fort Worth, Texas, is the first individual with autism to play golf with four-time major champion Ernie Els in an Els for Autism tournament (a charitable partner of PGA REACH). Deer found purpose and direction from his experience with golf, and under the mentorship of PGA Professional Josh Smith, became a two-time MVP and captain of his high school golf team.

·         Brynn Winter, 15, of New Orleans, also found confidence and a passion for golf through a GameON Autism Golf Clinic. Once shy and uninterested in sports, Winter now receives lessons from PGA Professional Robert Birtel and practices weekly.

·         PGA Professional Steve Adamiak recounts how a young cancer survivor named

Kendel Hodges, 16, impacted his life while he was building his junior golf program in Temecula, California. Hodges, who overcame Cancer as an infant, was an avid basketball player. Yet, he was forced to give up the sport after receiving a separate diagnosis at age 9 of a degenerative heart disease. Through the encouragement of his parents and lessons from Adamiak, Kendel discovered his love of golf, and in 2014, competed in the Junior PGA Championship.

PGA REACH is dedicated to benefitting communities nationwide through golf with a focus on three key pillars: Youth, Military, and Diversity/Inclusion. PGA REACH works closely with the 41 PGA Section Offices and charitable partners across the country to positively impact lives through the game of golf.

For more information on PGA REACH and PGA HOPE, visit www.pgareach.com.

~~~~~~~~

A Visit with Army Sgt. Brandon Adam

Love Notes 

by Marianne Love

October, 2007

A River Journal Exclusive

Until recently, I had not seen nor talked to Brandon Adam since the days when his fifth-period junior English class provided a heart-warming and wonderful last chapter to my teaching career at Sandpoint High School.  With 20-plus lively boys and four patient girls, we laughed every single day as I did my best to teach them some English. 

On National Teacher Day May 8, 2007, five years later, I saw Army Sgt. Brandon Adam’s picture on the front page above the fold in the Spokesman-Review.  During his second tour to Iraq on the morning of May 5 in Baghdad, Brandon lost both legs above the knee in a roadside bombing. 

Since then, I’ve received updates about his recovery in San Antonio, thanks to my friend Connie Book Lloyd who posts information and photos about his progress on her blog http://www.livelovelaughhope.blogspot.com/.  

This month I’ve had the opportunity to visit with Brandon during several phone conversations.  In this special edition of “Love Notes,” and through Brandon’s words, I’m sharing the highlights.

Brandon is the son of Doug and Karen Adam of Post Falls.  

Before joining the Army, he was a happy kid, a highly competitive dirt biker and soccer junkie. In fact, he’s proud to have played on a state champion soccer team.  This friendly, blond-haired, blue-eyed young man likes people to do their job.  If they don’t, he gets on their case.  That trait doesn’t always make people happy, he told me.

Rapper Kanye West’s “Stronger” plays on Brandon’s cell phone answering machine. What doesn’t kill me just makes me stronger, one lyric states.

“That’s what I listen to when I work out,” he says. “It helps me work through the physical pain and break the mental barriers.”  

Brandon faces both obstacles every single day as he learns to walk with prostheses,  which will gradually lengthen until he reaches his normal height of 6 feet tall.  Right now, he’s 5 feet, 6 inches.

 He’s walking up to 30 minutes a stretch, lifting weights and hoping to be running on indoor and outdoor tracks by the New Year.  He’s learning wheelchair racing.  He’s played some hockey, and recently surfed for four days at Pismo Beach, Calif. Brandon has especially enjoyed driving his new black Ford 150 four-door truck, complete with sun roof, hand controls and a stick substituting for pedals. His best high school buddy Ty Thomas came for a visit.
 

Lots of options, including wheel-chair competitions, skiing, earning a college degree and possibly a career in film editing await Brandon once he decides he needs no more physical therapy at Sam Houston Army Base near San Antonio.  He figures that may be March, at the latest.  In the meantime, he’s getting ready for the next phase of his life after serving and sacrificing for his country.

Sgt. Brandon Adam, recalling  the May 5 attack in Baghdad:  It was night. I was the gunner on the route clearance vehicle.  I was up in the turret and halfway hanging out of the vehicle and had my 240B machine gun and my 12-gauge shotgun for warning shots.  

We have non-lethal rounds in the shotgun and shoot their direction for buffer zones. I had my night vision goggles.  A blast went off and hit the right side of my vehicle.  It punctured a hole through the vehicle.  

A copper slug, called an Explosive Formed Projectile,  hit me and then blew apart inside the truck.  It goes straight through something, then goes from concave to convex and forms into a slug probably twice as big as a man’s fist.  It hit the driver (he suffered a laceration but was fine).  The blast force bent the framing and hit my squad leader in the back really hard, breaking some vertebrae.  The other soldier in the truck was fine.

Life-saving measures:  I’ve pieced this together from what people have told me.  I remember about 30 seconds after I got hit.  I slumped over, fell and was all disoriented.  It was dark.  I couldn’t see.

There was smoke everywhere.  I was more worried about my buddy who was sitting where the hole was.  I thought he had died.  I tried to get up and couldn’t . . . suddenly it felt like a million hot needles in my legs.  

I yelled out twice that I thought my legs were on fire.  They found me, dragged me out and immediately my best buddy John put a tourniquet on my left leg.  The right leg was too mangled for a tourniquet.  They have these things like a patch that coagulate the blood. They couldn’t really control the bleeding on my right side.

Next, Brandon was taken to an aid station for preliminary surgery and prepped for a larger hospital on the other side of Baghdad.  Hospital medics stopped his bleeding, ran blood through his body and administered pain medication. 

He was then choppered to the Baghdad Airport and transferred to an air hospital bound for Germany where his mother met him.  She  later accompanied him to the recently opened Center for the Intrepid in San Antonio, a state-of-the-art rehab center for amputees and burn victims.  Arriving there May 8, he  underwent major surgery to clean up the wounds. He also received more medication to keep him comfortable from the swelling and to fend off infection. 

Brandon’s first memories since the attack: I woke up.  My father was next to me and my older sister Trisha. I looked down.  My legs were all wrapped up.  I don’t remember my first thought. I guess I was always flirting with the nurses.  I think the clearest memory during ICU was when my Sgt. Major Kilpatrick pinned my purple heart on my chest. . . . Brandon stops briefly to control his emotions. . . I remember my squad leader was hurt with me, and in the same hospital,  and they pinned him and me.

Brandon left the hospital in early June after having his stitches removed.  He moved to his own room at Fort Sam Houston Army Base. He was fitted for sockets on each leg. He’s been walking for increasing amounts of time—as much as pain from damaged nerve endings allows.  Each prosthesis will eventually have knees added.

Brandon enjoyed a visit with former President George W. Bush while undergoing therapy in San Antonio.   --Courtesy Photo

Brandon:  They’re holding off on the right leg because it’s so short. It’s going to be a real challenge with the weight on the knee, so they’re taking it gradually.  I’ll get my right knee probably before Christmas and will start running after the New Year.  They won’t tell me to stop therapy until I say, ‘I think this is it.’  My goal is to go run a couple of miles without stopping.

In spite of his characteristic intensity, Brandon occasionally takes a day off from therapy, as he did on Tuesday, Oct. 16:  It’s one of those days when I woke up in a good amount of pain.  I didn’t feel like going to therapy, so I took a day for myself.   I used the shower head to massage my leg.  That helps with the pain. My buddy Nick came, and we went to Best Buy and got the movie Transformer.  I suggest you rent it; it’s pretty cool.

Brandon Adam decided to join the Army on Sept. 11, 2001, during his junior year of high school. He still feels passionately about that decision:  I was actually taking my driving test in Mr. Givens’ class.  We were listening to the radio, and it (news of the New York and Washington, D.C attacks) came on.  I was so overwhelmed with anger, frustration, sadness, and I just wanted to do my part.  On that very day I made my decision . . . it might sound kinda cliche, but it’s a true thing for me.  I wanted to go in the military, and nothing else mattered.  I just knew.

I feel the same way as I did when I joined, that there is a need to help.  If we left Iraq now, it would upset a lot of soldiers because people would have died in vain.  That’s the biggest thing.  People always pick out the negative in everything. The reporters are always so pessimistic and anti-Bush.  He was a man who made a decision that a lot of people wouldn’t want to make.  And, now that it’s not going as well as expected, they have to crucify the man.

The future for Sgt. Brandon Adam remains uncertain.  He’ll receive disability and forced retirement compensation for the rest of his life.  He can attend college on the GI Bill.  

He worries about finding a wife. He’s anxious to start his own family.  For now, he’s  very aware and humbled by the outpouring of generosity and caring he’s received from friends, family and strangers since the May.

Brandon: I can’t believe the reaction. I’m just one soldier.  At first, I thought, ‘why am I any different from anyone else?’  I’m trying to filter through all this.  I don’t feel like anyone should owe me anything.  I was just doing my job.  I just want to say thanks to everyone who helped support me and my family through this time in our lives.

This  writer to her former student,  Brandon:  I’m sure that I speak for the entire community in expressing deep appreciation for your service and sacrifice.  I’m also honored and grateful  to share your story.

Since moving to Colorado Springs, Brandon has won two silver medals in the annual X-games.  He's also happily married and the father of two daughters.  Photo, courtesy of ESPN. 

Brandon, holding daughters Rori and Lainey, with his wife Shannon. The Adams family lives in Colorado.  
                                                                     
                                                             --Photo Courtesy MontanaPhotoClient

Brandon Adam speaks of his experience with golf and with Saturday's PGA special:  

The reason I was asked to do this show was because the PGA of America heard about my instructor Paul Surniak and his program at Ft. Carson. I was Paul's first disabled golfer that he had worked with. So both of us really were learning together.

PGA of America contacted Paul about this special which they wanted to shoot, and he asked me to be in it. The reason I did it was to show veterans and the rest of disabled Americans that you can golf even with injuries.

We first shot the interview portion at my house. We did some stuff with my family also, as you will see in the piece.

I really wanted to learn to golf again to be able to do more activities with my daughters. Being in a chair makes things harder to have fun activities with my kids. So golf was very natural to start playing again because I had played since 6-7 years of age. My grandfather taught me originally.

On the second day of the shoot, I attended a clinic for veterans at Ft. Carson to show wounded warriors firsthand that it’s possible to play with my injuries.

After that, we went out on the course and played a few holes for them. That was an interesting way to golf, having camera two feet from you and being told when to swing, but everything went smoothly.

We also did a lot of shots with my daughter on the course. Elaina really loved that. She stole the show. She’s very comfortable in front of the camera. She actually gave me more confidence watching her.

Overall, it was a lot of fun, and I hope we reach more veterans to try something new. Sports is the best therapy I know of. At least, it is for me.

Golf has already given me so many memories with my daughter Elaina and all my other friends. To go out and play a sport without slowing other people down is huge.

Sometimes being in a chair becomes a burden when I do other things with friends, like camping and hiking and even sometimes skiing.

But with golf I'm just one of the guys. That feels good.