Politicos, Entertainers Turn Out for Vet Rehab Center Dedication

By Chris Vaughn, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas

Jan. 29–SAN ANTONIO — Heavy-hitters from Washington, D.C. to Hollywood turned out this morning for the dedication of a $40 million rehabilitation center to treat amputees and burn victims from combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Center for the Intrepid, the brainchild of a wealthy New York developer who is a major backer of military families, was entirely paid for by private donations from ordinary citizens to corporate CEOs.

“It is to make sure our young men and women who have given so much are aware that the American people care about them,” said Arnold Fisher, whose family started the Fisher Houses outside military hospitals.

Dozens of politicians and entertainers arrived in San Antonio for the dedication of the center, a 65,000 square foot building next door to Brooke Army Medical Center.

Former prisoner of war U.S. Sen. John McCain, presidential hopeful and U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Jim Nicholson and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Peter Pace led the delegation.

But the thousands in attendance at the late-morning ceremony also heard from Michelle Pfeiffer, Rosie O’Donnell and John Mellencamp.

In addition to the new center, the dignitaries dedicated two new Fisher Houses at Brooke, each of them with 21 bedrooms and room for 65 people.

Fisher Houses, paid for by private donations and staffed largely with volunteers, are a free home-away-from-home for thousands of families nationwide.

And few places are as busy as Brooke, which has treated more than 2,400 soldiers, airmen and Marines since the fall of 2001.

Some of those troops were wounded so severely that they will spend months in a critical-care room at the hospital and many months more in need of therapy and other outpatient services.

But unlike most amputee patients, these are young men and women in their 20s and 30s, in otherwise top physical condition and all of them with their lives ahead of them.

As a rule, the medical professionals say, they’re motivated to restore their strength and prove they can physically rebound.

“These guys are in fabulous shape, and they’re ready to get back into life with their peers,” said Laura Marin, a biomechanist who analyzes how the soldiers use their prosthetic limbs.

That’s why Fisher launched the fundraising campaign for the center.

He believed that their future quality of life and their ability to care for themselves and their families required far better rehab facilities than the Defense Department was providing.

In the view of some of the soldiers who saw the center and its state-of-the-art laboratories and therapy rooms, he succeeded.

“I don’t think there is anywhere in the world that compares to this,” said Army Staff Sgt. Jon Arnold-Garcia, a soldier in the 101st Airborne Division who had a leg amputated last year after a grenade attack in Iraq.

Arnold-Garcia called some of the rooms “space-age, like something they have at NASA.”

He believes that with facilities like that, he can reach his goal.

“First, I want to run,” the Sacramento native said. “And if it’s feasible, I’m going to run the Big Sur Marathon. It’s beautiful. You’re running down Highway 1 with the ocean the whole way.

“I want to do it. And I hate running.”

The staff at Brooke who make the prosthetics have custom-built hundreds in the past five years for men such as Arnold-Garcia.

What has them excited about the new building is that they will be located on-site and within view of the physical therapy center, where adjustments and fixes can be made immediately.

“In the hospital, all we’ve got is a flat tile floor,” said John Fergason, the lead prosthetist. “That’s not how the real world looks. They need to be climbing steep stairs and down inclines and running.”

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Copyright (c) 2007, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

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