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 pain made it impossible for him to move any farther. Ultimately, he passed out.
Moments later, Ron’s copilot, Terry McDonald, regained consciousness. Dazed and disoriented, Terry staggered toward a clearing in the trees to try to get his bearings. What happened next was a soldier’s worst night-mare—the enemy lay in wait, and Terry was captured. Tragically, he would never be heard from again.
Back at the wreckage, however, Ron remained unconscious. In their haste, the enemy soldiers mistakenly left him for dead.
When he finally awoke, hours later, Ron was confused and unsure of where he was. “You know how in the movies, they say, ‘Where am I?’ That’s just how it was.” Slowly, he discovered the extent of his injuries. “My flight helmet was shattered, which means I hit my head pretty hard,” he comments, “and I felt a real sharp pain in my left leg. I looked down, and the foot was laying flat, even though my leg was straight. When I moved it, the foot flopped all the way over. I could see that half of my boot was gone, that I was bleeding quite a bit. I knew I had to stop this bleeding or I was going to die.”
Weak, immobile, and losing more and more blood, Ron knew that it was only a matter of time before he would die or the enemy would return. Summoning up his remaining strength, Ron recalls, “I crawled over to some trees not far from the wreckage. And I put both legs up in the air, against the tree. And that’s how I spent the night.”
“When I awoke, it was morning. It had been raining, and I remember trying to catch some raindrops with my mouth, ’cause I was thirsty,” says Ron. “I began trying to think about how I was gonna get out of there.”
The situation seemed hopeless. Three search-and-rescue missions for the two missing pilots had already failed. One helicopter had been shot down, killing three soldiers. A second was badly damaged, and a third was ambushed when it landed.
Unable to walk, Ron had no choice but to wait and pray. He desperately needed a miracle. A few hours later, his prayers were answered when a fourth army helicopter finally spotted him.
“The door gunner had seen a piece of wreckage, and that’s what made them turn around,” explains Ron. “They sent a medic down on a cable. He hooked me up to a harness, and they hauled me out of there.”
The next thing Ron knew, he was waking up in a MASH-unit field hospital. But his ordeal was far from over.
“It was three days before I gained consciousness. And they did emergency surgery on me.” Doctors did their best to try and save Ron’s leg, but as he tells it, “They told me later they didn’t know if I was gonna make it.”
Ron was shipped to Japan, where doctors performed additional surgery. But the prognosis wasn’t good. Upon his return to the States, Ron would face amputation below the knee.
“I had not realized how seriously I was injured,” reveals Ron. “I saw my flying career going away.”
When Ron was finally returned home, his doctors felt they could save his leg. But it wouldn’t come without a price—the damaged limb had contracted an incurable bone infection, which gave Ron constant pain, and which got progressively worse. “A lot of time was spent on crutches,” Ron says.
Four years and sixteen painful surgeries later, Ron had had enough. He was transferred to a military hospital in Denver, Colorado, where, two days later, his foot and lower calf were amputated. The results were immediate and miraculous.
“By 10:00 A.M. I wanted to get out of bed. And they said, ‘No, you gotta stay in bed, nobody gets out of bed after an amputation.’ I said, ‘I feel fine.’ The next day I was out of my bed and walking on crutches around the hospital, with absolutely no pain. It was like this huge burden had been lifted,” recalls Ron.
Ron’s convalescence was amazing. He was fitted with an artificial limb and, as always, he was determined to defy the odds.
“They’d always have to chase me out of therapy,” Ron remembers. “I’d get down there and I would spend hours. I was determined I was gonna be a good walker.”
Ron became more than just a good walker, however. Soon, he was playing baseball, learning to ski, and running 10K races.
“The attitude I developed,” he says, “was that the artificial leg was now a part of me.”
Eventually, Ron also came to terms with the fact that his flying career was over. But he was still struggling with one unanswered question.
“I was always asking God, you know, ‘Why me? Why did you take my leg?’”
Then in 1992, while on a business trip, Ron came across a newspaper article that helped answer that question. The article described three-year-old Russian twins who’d been born with gangrene in their legs. Both boys had been turned over to an orphanage at infancy—after their legs had been amputated.
“It struck me,” Ron says, “that with all I’d been through over the past couple of decades, I could do something for these two kids that somebody with two good legs couldn’t, because I know what they can do and what they can’t do.
“I got on the phone to my wife and I pleaded with her that we should adopt these kids,” recalls Ron. Next, he contacted the Cradle of Hope, an adoption agency in Washington, D.C., and convinced them that they needed to look no further to place the Russian twins.
“I