Postivity: War injuries draw couple, community closer
March 16, 2008
….. When a sniper’s bullet shattered his jaw and severed his spine in August 2004, the then-21-year-old specialist and Humvee gunner with 1st Cavalry Division gave up the ability to hold his wife and children again or to feel the warmth of a puppy.
Burleson, a large strapping man with the beefy build of a footballer — which he was — now is a quadriplegic, paralyzed from the neck down.
“It’ll never be as big a price as what others have paid, though,” he said from his home in north Webster Parish, thinking of the nearly 4,000 men and women who have died in the war in Iraq since it began five years ago Wednesday.
Though Burleson will spend the rest of his life in a motorized wheelchair or in bed, with a tracheotomy tube providing every breath, he is a surprisingly upbeat 24-year-old. His plans include watching his children, son Alex, 31/2, and daughter Ally, 5, grow up, though not too fast.
“I couldn’t be luckier, really,” he said, bundled against the cold on the day snow blanketed the area. “My son was born after I was shot. I couldn’t be luckier. I couldn’t ask much more than that.”
Burleson also is thankful to be alive. “If it wasn’t for all the great medical staff that was close by, I wouldn’t be here.”
Army was his choice
Burleson fulfilled a lifelong goal and joined the Army in 2001, not long after he graduated from Springhill High School and before the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001. He played football as a guard all but his senior year, missing what usually is the biggest season in a player’s life because of the effects of a bad shoulder injury the previous year.
That injury actually caused the military to turn him down at first. Undaunted, Burleson had surgery — at his expense — that repaired the shoulder enough to please the military.
After service in Korea, he was based at Fort Hood, Texas, where Burleson met his wife, Kristi, at a fort social where he stepped on her boot and, Kristi said, “I kicked him in the rear.”
That got his attention, and he got hers.
“And then we went to IHOP,” she said.
He got orders to Iraq, so they put off their big-wedding plans until his return.
That was before the day that changed his life forever: Aug. 18, 2004.
Burleson was the top turret gunner on a Humvee on patrol in Baghdad with other members of his Fort Hood-based 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment “Black Knights” during an operation to cordon off the city that hot summer day.
He thinks he was the only one of the four soldiers in the armored vehicle to be wounded in the attack . Burleson doesn’t remember anything for a week before the attack and about a week after.
By the latter, he’d already been treated for several days in Iraq until his condition stabilized then was at the Army’s European medical facility at Landstuhl, Germany.
Kristi learned of her husband’s wound through a phone call. “They don’t come to visit you when they’re still alive,” she said.
From Germany, he was shipped stateside to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., where he underwent several operations. That October, Burleson was sent to the VA Medical Center in Dallas, which has special facilities to treat spinal cord injuries.
Burleson an inspiration
Burleson’s sacrifice and his struggle to join the Army inspired his neighbors and veterans groups near and far to band with volunteers and contractors to build the family a house adapted to his needs.
The 3,000-square-foot, $300,000 structure now commands a low hill on longtime family property on Percy Burns Road, just south of the Arkansas border. The couple received the home in late 2006.
The effort also was helped by Massachusetts-based Homes for Our Troops and Colorado-based American War Heroes.
The two-level home, built from Eco-block insulated concrete, can withstand 200-mph winds. It also has a sophisticated lift that can move Burleson from his bed to the bathroom and to a few other necessary areas of the house.
“It certainly brought the community together,” said Ken Koval, who led Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 5951 in its efforts to help the couple. “People and businesses would donate this, donate that. It was unbelievable. I was surprised by the generosity shown.” …..
