Northern Michigan Voices is a series by 9&10 News reporter Olivia Fellows in which she interviews a person in the community about a story or experience from their life. Everyone has an interesting story to tell, and we want to give you a voice, Northern Michigan! To submit your own story pitch, see the bottom of this article for more details.
In this edition, Olivia talks to Jonathan Turnbull, a Gaylord county commissioner and former Army major who was blinded in a bombing attack while serving his country in Syria, lost five members of his team and later came back to his hometown to make a difference with his experience in leadership.
Hear from Turnbull about his experience finding peace and healing following traumatic injury, and how he brought his talents and dedication back home to serve his community in an entirely new way.
Q: Could you begin by telling me a little bit about yourself and your military service background?
TURNBULL: I grew up in Gaylord. I graduated in 2005 and joined the United States Army and attended the Military Academy at West Point, graduating there in 2010 to be commissioned an officer in the Army. I started out in 2012 deployed to Afghanistan for nine months, came home, and later was assessed and selected for special operations under the first Special Forces Command. I was transitioned to a civil affairs officer in the civil affairs regiment. I deployed in 2015 to Hashemite, Kingdom of Jordan, and then in 2016 to Lebanon.
Both of these were the anti or the counter-ISIS fight, and in 2017 I deployed again to Jordan for the continued mission, smaller deployments throughout all this from Kuwait to Lebanon to the Arab Emirates, just all over the Middle East. In 2018, my final deployment, I went to Iraq, and after about a month there, was given a follow-up mission into Syria where we assembled a special operations team and went into a province called Manbij, which is the only coalition-controlled territory west of the Euphrates River in the Aleppo province.
Our team consisted of three Special Forces soldiers, a naval intelligence senior chief, a second-class Navy Seal petty officer, and multiple psychological operations soldiers. I was the team leader. The first thing we did was my team was instrumental in restoring electricity to northeast Syria, parts of Turkey, Iraq and Jordan by doing a project on a hydroelectric dam in a place called Tishreen. The second thing we did was rebuild a local hospital, essentially providing medical infrastructure for the entire region.
Our province was composed of about 45,000 people who didn’t have anything medical before our team got to work. The final thing we did― and my favorite thing that I love talking about― was when we arrived in Syria, there had been an eight-year prohibition on girls attending any sort of schooling, a prohibition put on by ISIS. Us being on the ground there, we started running initiatives and programs to return girls to school, and they returned to school in November of 2018, and after an eight-year absence.
It’s my favorite thing to say because that’s the definition of what we were there fighting for. Fighting for freedom, promoting justice and defending the American way of life, all this while we were working to dismantle ISIS’s power over the people, their oppression and tyranny.
On Jan. 16, 2019, after leaving one of the schools that girls had just returned to we met up at one of our vehicles for a short briefing to say what our next mission was going to be when my team ― the team’s name is cross-functional team Manbij, after the location we were in was attacked ― had an ISIS fighter run up to my team wearing a suicide vest and as soon as he engaged my team, he detonated his vest, killing four Americans, and wounding myself and two other Americans on my team.
The four Americans that were killed, to honor their family and their memory, were Chief John Farmer who was in Special Forces, Senior Chief Shannon Kent who was with Naval Intelligence, and Petty Officer, second class Scott Wirtz our Navy Seal on our team. We also lost our non-combatant linguist and interpreter, Ghadir Taher, affectionately known as Jasmine, who was with Valiant Integrated Service, a U.S. Department of Defense contractor.
These four Americans lost their lives defending freedom, promoting justice and protecting the American way of life. In this explosion, there are 23 people were ultimately killed. Nineteen Syrians, from children to adults, were killed, and I and two of my teammates were also gravely injured.
I was medically evacuated to Iraq, then Germany and finally to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, where I spent two years working on recovering. I had 22 life-saving surgeries just to get me where I am today so I could literally even stand up to being able to get used to my new condition. In the explosion I lost my right eye entirely, my left eye was punctured and I ended up losing total vision after about a month of surgeries and trying to work on repairing it. The result of the explosion was my becoming totally blind.
I was not supposed to be able to remember anything due to a traumatic brain injury, and they predicted that I was paralyzed on the left side of my body and that I would never be able to walk again. But due to the amazing feats of modern medicine and our doctors who were there when I came out of all the surgeries, I was able to stand up and I remember everything from who I am to my family. A lot of these predictions that they were doing, if I went untreated, I would have been in a much worse spot.
I was released with a more or less clean bill of health. I still have complications from the explosion, which is to be expected, but I go back to the doctor every now and then. I’ll continue to have follow-up medical care, whether locally here with the VA or if I have to go back to the hospital, for the rest of my life. Ultimately, after the explosion, doctors gave me a 0% chance of survival.
The strange thing about that was they weren’t wrong. During my medical evacuation to Iraq, right after the explosion, I coded, meaning my heart stopped beating and I stopped breathing. If it weren’t for the medical attendants on the flight, our medics and our doctors performing CPR on me I would have stayed dead, but they were able to help bring me back to life and get my heart beating again and breathing. This occurred two more times. Ultimately, I legally died three times over the two years leading up to my leaving Walter Reed.
Things are not perfect, and I still have a long road ahead. It’s not just myself, my family they’re right alongside me the whole way and people who know me there. We have a long road ahead and a lot of stuff that we’ll have to take care of, but we’re willing to accept the challenges ahead and face them on our feet, especially with good people helping us along the way.
Q: What was it like going from growing up in small-town Gaylord, deciding to be in the military, and experiencing, as you mentioned, in many facets, a completely different way of life where you were stationed? How did going through the military and seeing these different cultures impact your outlook on life and your understanding of the world?
TURNBULL: Deep question. I love it. The first thing I would like to comment on was my decision to join the military. Everybody has a 9/11 story, except for all the young people who weren’t born yet. But I remember my Sept. 11, 2001― I was working at a local pool here in Gaylord as a lifeguard, when my boss came running into the pool area and said, ‘Jon, I need you to get into my office right now,’ and I thought I was in trouble.
We got in there and on her desk, she had one of the old TVs with the little rabbit ears, but it was tuned into the news. I came in just as the second plane hit the World Trade Center and talking heads came on. And I remember, I mean, I can hear it still in my day-to-day, like America’s at War, the United States of America has been attacked by an unknown enemy, and they continued talking about it. I was shocked. I was outraged. I was really upset because we live in the greatest country in the world. Who would attack us? Why would they attack us? I decided to make a commitment to myself and our country at that moment that I was going to do something about it.
I wanted to defend our freedom and promote justice throughout the world. At that time I was a sophomore in high school, I was going to join the military, started talking with the recruiters and couldn’t join as a sophomore. I had to wait until my junior year, I went down to Detroit and enlisted in the United States Army, started doing my training, came back for school and finished up my senior year of school. I applied for the military academy and was accepted.
I transitioned as an enlisted soldier to becoming a cadet and went through it all. So the impact of going from small town Northern Michigan to the military was I loved it, and that the diversity of our military. We had people from all walks of life outside of here in the United States, one of my soldiers was from Ukraine, and I had others from the Middle East, some from the Philippines, all over the world. People who had wanted to come to America to live the American dream.
Very similar to my story, when we were attacked, they vowed to do something about it with their adoptive country. I loved getting there and seeing the diversity and getting to know these people. Seeing that overall, no matter where you go in the world fathers want their children and their spouses to be able to live in safety and security, mothers want their kids to be happy and well-fed, and everybody just wants more or less peace.
Whether it was in non-deployments in Jordan, when I was in Syria and Iraq, over in Africa, every time that we talked to people, and I got moved into that civil affairs job, which was focusing on the people back in the early 2000s they always talked about the war being fighting for the hearts and minds of people.
That was the job of civil affairs was to look for several civil vulnerabilities, various things that people didn’t have based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs; if people didn’t have enough food, if they didn’t have clean drinking water, or didn’t have access to medicine or schooling. Certain people, more or less bad people, can come in and influence them by providing these things, electricity, generators and whatnot. We were able to identify these and speak to local governments, which was another thing that really surprised me in places like Jordan.
Coming from Gaylord, Michigan, and graduating from our high school here, I never thought I would sit and address royalty like the King of Jordan on civil vulnerabilities, where violent actors and terrorists could influence his people against his royal court. But here I was, I had the opportunity of doing just that and making the world a safer and better place. Also helping the people that we were there trying to assist was a fantastic job, something that I didn’t know that our military even did.
I didn’t know that there was the other side, that was absolutely fantastic. I loved being a part of it. I was helping them, giving them a hand up, and encouraging the people saying, ‘You don’t have to live under tyranny, you don’t have to put up with oppression. You can stand up, make your voices heard and you can live in a free world.’
By doing that, we were able to see people embrace it, embrace freedom. For example, the young ladies in Syria, not only was there a prohibition on going to school but they were treated very poorly. They were under very strict Muslim law, or Sharia law, so all the girls went around with their heads covered. Many of them wore entire coverings― hijabs. We were starting to see a shift in dynamics in our culture, especially by our late team linguist. She was a young woman who grew up in grew up here in America, but she was born in Syria to a Syrian family, so she was a native Syrian. When we’d walk around, we’d go to meetings, she wore hair down, or like in a ponytail, so to speak. Her face was uncovered, and sometimes she would wear a baseball cap, because who doesn’t like a good baseball cap?
At the time of the explosion, when we’d walk around the markets we started to see this shift in the culture there, where girls were starting to wear blue jeans and t-shirts, and they’d be running around with their hair in ponytails, and they were embracing freedom, and they would come up to us and just all the time. Not just the kids, but the adults, would come to shake our hands and just tell us ‘Thank you. Thank you for showing us that you know we can be free. Thank you for giving us a way to be free through working with the local government.’ I was really humbled and honored to be a part of all that.
Q: Can you tell me about kind of the impact that experiencing the bombing had on you, both physically and mentally? Was there anything aftermath that was helpful that came from family, friends or the organizations that you worked directly with in your recovery, and was there anything that detracted from your recovery?
TURNBULL: To be brief, I’m just going to answer your question with yes, coming out of the after the explosion doctors jumped right into it. Eight hours after I had my first surgery, removing shrapnel from an artery and being intubated. I didn’t come out of my medically induced coma for about a month until after the explosion, but I’d already made it through Germany, and back to Walter Reed. I had multiple surgeries, five surgeries, and they stabilized me enough to pull me out of the coma.
I was intubated so I was asleep, but I remember conversations I could still hear people around me. I remember my wife sitting next to me, telling me, ‘Hey, hang on, you’ll be all right.’ I remember one of the guys who traveled to Germany with my family was my unit’s chaplain along with the medical officer, and I remember him praying over me. I remember people touching the top of my head, that encouragement. People grabbing my shoulder, be it my dad or my mom, praying over me.
It was really at the request of my wife and family to have the doctors try to remove me from the sedation. It was the worst thing ever, waking up with a breathing tube and not breathing on my own was kind of odd. I started to come to and things were very foggy for me. I remember the explosion, I could see it. I mean, I can see it now, even with my current blindness, I can see the attacker and the attack happen. I can see the explosion. I can see flashes after the explosion because I still had limited eyesight and all the way up to the time when I woke up.
I remember all these flashes of what happened and tell my wife that she’s like, ‘Yep, that happened or that didn’t happen.’ We had to play a game, real or not, because I was remembering a lot of the most random things ever. One of them was Matt Damon coming into the room and watching a movie with me, never happened, but I remember it happening.
I knew there was something wrong because by the time I came out of the intubation, I couldn’t see. They performed surgeries on both my eyes and one was completely gone from the explosion. The other one was so injured, they had to remove the majority of it. I was a little hard of hearing before the explosion so afterwards, I was more hard of hearing. I was scared and I was really frightened. I didn’t know what was happening and was wondering where my team was.
My wife broke down, having to tell me, ‘Hey, there was the explosion, your four teammates were killed.’ I don’t know how long it took for that to sink in, for me to fully understand what had happened. She told me multiple times, three or four different times, and finally, she had to call in other people to sit down with me, because she couldn’t bear telling me anymore because I would break down.
These teammates, on deployment, they were your family. We spent every waking hour together and we were truly closer than family. They ended up bringing in one of my teammates who was also injured, and he sat down with me and we went through everything, step by step. The physical wounds, they are what they are.
I actually would prefer my physical injuries, because doctors can fix them, they do their surgery, stitch you up, give you a little bit of medicine and you’re good to go. But emotionally, the trauma, the psyche, there was nothing doctors could do. It took lots of counseling from trained counselors and from untrained counselors. Honestly, it was the untrained counselors that I believe did more for me than all the doctors combined because it was those spiritual, emotional, traumatic events that I didn’t even know how to get over.
I knew when they physically removed my left thigh muscle to place it over my right orbital socket to hold my face together. They’re like, ‘You’ll never be able to walk again,’ and I remember being like, ‘Oh yeah? I can’t walk again? Watch this.’ It just became a challenge to overcome. Physically, I can do that and get stronger. Being blind, they said, ‘You’re never able to get around on your own,’ so I attended a blind rehab where I was shown how to navigate and get around. I told everyone to stop telling me what I can’t do, let’s start encouraging me with ‘Let’s see what you can do.’
Emotionally, I didn’t know how to overcome the grief that I was going through. I understand the stages of grief, and I kind of got stuck on anger. I was angry at what had happened, angry at the people who had done it. It took people coming sitting down and organizations that were involved at Walter Reed and elsewhere that helped keep me positive. Some of them were fantastic, the best organizations ever, people who genuinely cared. Others were there for more or less other reasons.
It was those organizations where people were there for the right reasons that really made an impact. The Semper Fi & America’s Fund was by far one of the greatest organizations that had an impact on my life because as the doctors were fixing me up physically, it was the fund that came to help. I am not sure of the representative’s title― I just refer to her as the social worker― but she came and sat with me and it’s one of the very first conversations I can remember having where the social worker just asked me what happened. Lots of people asked, but I didn’t feel like a lot of people cared enough to listen. She listened to me pour my heart and soul out.
I tried to stay positive. I said to her, ‘Rather than remember these my four teammates and tell you how they died let me tell you how funny John Farmer was, let me tell you about the time that Jasmine slapped me and told me I had to grow up.’ That’s what it was all about.
One big question every single person asked, from all my family to the President when he came and visited, was ‘What can we do to help?’ It usually came down to food, because I was always hungry. There were people that genuinely cared, people that would listen and help.
One of my favorite times at Walter Reed was when we were talking, and she’d asked, ‘Hey, what do you need? I remember very clearly being like, I am freezing.’ This is February timeframe in Washington, DC, with snow outside and freezing arctic air, and I was in the hospital in a hospital gown. I was freezing, and the social worker said, ‘Okay, give me a second.’ She walked out and came back with the blanket, and trust me, after being blown up I know about my mind being blown when she came back holding a blanket, and this blanket had been placed in an oven. A heated blanket was the greatest feeling I had felt pretty much my whole life. I made it warm, just soaking into my skin the joy I had from it plus the kindness of this person to hear me say I was cold and find a way to remedy that.
We talked for a few hours. This was in the early wee hours of the morning, and I would be talking and I’d start shivering again, but the social worker would stand up and she’d come back with another blanket. When my wife came to the hospital in the middle of the morning, she laughed because I had this mountain of blankets on me.
There’s this constant communication, the developing of a relationship to the point where they got to know me. Another time was when the social worker saw that I wasn’t wearing socks, and she said ‘No wonder you’re always cold you have bare feet!’ Someone bought you some socks.’ Then she proceeded to put the socks on for me. It was an incredible thing that somebody would not just be sitting there listening, spending time but paying attention and observing what’s going on to truly care enough to take time out of their own day to see a problem and take action to fix it.
It was these little things, these random acts of kindness that did more for my psyche, did more for my emotional trauma than anything else. The impact that they had on my life, the fund showed me hope not just for the present, but for the future. I know if I ever need help, because care doesn’t end when you leave the hospital, I’ll know where to go. I will be fighting an uphill battle for the rest of my life, not just physically, but emotionally, it gives me comfort knowing that there are good people out there.
There are a lot of projects and programs that seek this continuation of care, by being proactive rather than waiting to see what happens.
Q: After going through something so traumatic during your service, what inspired you to want to come back home to Gaylord and become a county commissioner, and serve your community in a new way?
TURNBULL: Everything kind of stems from that initial desire to serve our country. I was committed when I made my oath to defend the United States Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, I know it doesn’t stop with getting out of the service. I still love America, and I still want to do something. I was looking at what’s going on in our country, and trying to figure out ways I could get involved.
The reason we moved back to Michigan was I’m a homebody just as much as everybody else, and the best healing takes place at home. With my wife and I having one kid at the time, we were like, ‘Why don’t we move home and get close to family that way.’ My son could spend time with grandma and grandpa, I thought that’d be a fantastic idea. What I didn’t anticipate was when I left North Carolina in November of 2022 it was 80 degrees at my home in North Carolina, and when I arrived here in Gaylord it was minus 20. I thought I may have made a grave tactical error, but moving back here has been one of the best things ever minus the weather and the winter.
Having family close by has been great, not just family, but close friends and people that I grew up with. I am always running into guys and gals that I graduated high school with. I got involved with politics when I first moved back, attended a few county board meetings and was really intrigued by a lot of the stuff that they were voting on, trying to make Otsego County better by helping the people.
It was very similar to the job I was doing overseas, identifying those civil vulnerabilities. We’re blessed to live in one of the greatest nations in the world, we’re not hurting for food, clean drinking water or sanitation. We address other things including how we continue to make sure to continue security working with a Sheriff’s Department or improving health by working with the Board of Health in our health department. I was watching what the county commissioners were doing and there were some things that kind of bugged me, the way that they were handling them, and I honestly thought very vainly that I felt I could do a better job.
I ran and was voted in as a county commissioner. I did serve my two years, and this year I was up for re-election and decided to run again because the stuff we had done had a profound impact on our community. I wanted to continue doing it and was really appreciative that the people wanted me to continue and voted me in again. I wanted to continue in my defense of our country and protect the American way of life. That drove me to start to continue serving.
Q: Can you tell me some things that you really love about Gaylord and Otsego County?
TURNBULL: I love the small-town atmosphere, everybody knows everybody for the most part here in Otsego County. I attend a lot of meetings, and throughout these meetings, because we’re close, people are close to each other. They have no problem telling you what they think, what they want and how to fix things and that makes it nice. People are very open in their communication here.
I walk around downtown going to a few of the local shops where you won’t find much better people than people here at the Gaylord, people that want to help you out. Being totally blind now, I walk around and I have my cane, and usually, if I am standing somewhere for even just a few moments, people will come to and be like, ‘Hey, can we help you out?’
The people who want to help at our Veteran Affairs Office here are absolutely incredible. I sit on our Veteran Affairs board and I am a little biased because I also get help from them, but to see people that work their work their tails off just trying to make sure people are getting the benefits that they earned over their service up here is amazing.
I think our middle school does one of the greatest Veterans Day ceremonies that I’ve seen. I’ve been to a few of them, but this, by far, is one of the greatest ones. Absolutely incredible. Something as simple as standing there listening to the entire school recite the Pledge of Allegiance gives you hope for the future and pride in our country. Our county’s patriotism and the town’s patriotism are incredible and it makes me love being an American.
Q: Can you speak to the support that can be offered this time of year for veterans, especially those who might be struggling? Do you have any messages you’d share with fellow veterans, their families and others?
TURNBULL: Absolutely, one thing I love to talk about is resiliency, and I am an extreme case. I pray that nobody else has to go through something as traumatic as me, but I’m a realist and I know that many of our veterans have gone through traumatic events, not just our veterans. Everybody goes through something, everybody has something they’re dealing with― a problem, an issue or uncertainty.
What I can say is face everything on your feet rather than hear that you can’t do something, and accept it as a challenge. Think of things like a challenge accepted every day. I also encourage everybody, especially our veterans out there, no matter how difficult the situation, no matter what you’re going through― you are not alone. Even for people that are not veterans, you’re not alone. There’s somebody, there are organizations and there are individuals out there that want to help. All you have to do is find them. They’re looking for us, they’re looking for you. They want to help, and you don’t have to face it on your own.
I’ll argue this with anybody else; we didn’t win Vietnam, Korea, all these great wars as individuals. We won them fighting as a team. We only win battles fighting as a team. When we have our individual battles, especially for all of our veterans, remember that you don’t have to face the things you’re going through as an individual. Put together your team, get together your friends, your family, and let’s tackle these things. You’re not alone.
It’s unfortunate when a request comes across the desk because I don’t want anybody to have to suffer enough to put a request together. We just recently dealt with someone who had a water heater malfunction. This individual came to the Veteran Affairs office, spoke with our Veteran Service Officer and said he needed help. The Veteran Service Officer said, ‘Let me talk to some people. I’ve got some people to the board,’ and we were able to purchase her a new water heater and get it installed.
That’s one example that’s a real, feel-good, happy example, but it is an example that for everybody that’s going through something whether a veteran or not, there are organizations out there that can help. For some, that’s the whole reason for their organization.
They’re looking to help heal emotional hurts, physical hurts or just sitting there talking, having somebody to talk to your shoulder to cry on. A person to grab a coffee and a donut with. That’s my favorite thing. You don’t have to tackle these things alone.
Q: Are there any misconceptions or anything that you want to debunk about the military experience that you want to share with others that you think people need to know?
TURNBULL: A positive thing from my experience is sharing with family members of service people who are joining the military. I talked to a lot of parents, as parents, we worry about our kids gonna grow up wondering, ‘Are they gonna be safe?’ Well, the one thing that I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt is, for our service members one of the worst things to happen is becoming injured but if it happens it’s not the end. There are great organizations out there that are going to help pull us through. Quality doctors, nurses and medical professionals, from the point of injury to recovery and aftercare.
Veterans Affairs gets a bad rap. I won’t say there aren’t bad things that happen at the VA, I know there are a lot of issues, but those get resolved quickly. The organization continues to evolve over time, to find those issues and fix them and get them better to the point where I went to the VA expecting some of what you hear like they are all bad care and people that don’t care, I couldn’t find anything further from the truth.
We’ve all seen the Rambo movies, that show war as a horrible thing, and it is. But that’s not all that our military does nowadays. With my story, I would consider it non-lethal aid, some people would consider humanitarian aid and that’s a whole different realm with the State Department. The non-lethal aid was looking to alleviate suffering, helping the people that way. It’s a long-term effect. We’ve got long-term goals, we may have strategies— a 10-year or 50-year strategy for preventing violent extremism in these areas so that once when we finish the war, another one doesn’t pop up in the next couple of years.
From what I’ve seen with the soldiers I’ve all served with, we fight for honor and integrity. Just doing those three big things, I love talking about the defense of freedom, promoting justice and protecting the American way of life. Those are three things that most service members can stand behind. So fighting with honor, fighting again with integrity, being an ambassador of the United States overseas to protect us, I think it’s a very honorable and awesome thing.
Q: Looking towards the future, what can you tell me about your plans for continuation of care for yourself as you continue to face the traumatic aspects of what you’ve experienced, and what legacy or impact do you hope to leave behind both as a veteran and as a community leader in Otsego County and Gaylord?
TURNBULL: The biggest thing personally that I want to leave behind is a better world, in many different aspects. I know I’ve had a pretty profound impact overseas. I did write a short book, “Zero Percent Chance,” a memoir regarding what we did overseas. The highlight of the book wasn’t all the cool stuff we were doing saving the world and how amazing my team was, but it was about individuals. I focused on the individuals, on Jasmine, on John, on Scott and on Shannon, because I wanted their children rather than focus on the negative again, to focus on the positive. I didn’t want them to focus on why their mommy died, or why their daddy was killed. I wanted to tell them how their loved one lived.
I talk quite a bit in the book about John Farmer, and his smile. The guy was always smiling if it was cold out, if he was hungry, all the time. I want that to be imparted to his kids, their dad was the happiest person I knew, a great person. I’m spending a lot of my life devoting it to the children of my fallen teammates, to leave them that legacy.
Shannon’s babies were just babies when she died, so they’ll never know their mom and won’t remember her. But I want to be there so I can be like, ‘Hey, let me tell you how awesome your mom was,’ how she spoke 10 different languages fluently and would get in arguments with our linguist because she would say that our linguist was using the wrong words or the wrong pronouns or whatnot.
That’s one of the biggest legacies I want to leave is happiness in the world, being proud of who their families were but also not just the families. I grew up hearing that the price of freedom isn’t free, and I knew that there were people out there doing great things to protect me. I love leaving behind the stories so people can remember their names and say a prayer for them.
As far as the politics, we’ll see where politics go. If I can, I’m going to continue to serve locally. If I make the decision to go into state politics or federal politics, that decision is to be made in the future so I don’t want to have to think about it right now. I would love to continue to serve the American people in any way that I can again.
Recently, I had a doctor reached out to me and said, ‘Hey, how would you like to see again?’ Being totally blind, I told him it’d be a nice thing. They’re doing research right now and conducting an eye transplant out at New York University, and I went to New York to meet with the doctor and underwent a bunch of initial evaluation tests to see if I could qualify as a patient for them to be one of the very first transplant patients. There’s there’s hope for the future. There’s always hope.
I lean very heavily on my faith, knowing that whatever sort of my way, God will help me get through it, or God will give me good people like people from The Fund who can help. I just want Americans to be proud of the country that they’re in and know that people stand in defense of our freedoms, do it willingly and we’re excited to do it. Everyone thanks me for their freedom, and I always think of saying ‘Well, thank you for allowing me the opportunity to serve.’ I will continue to do it as long as I’m capable.
Have an interesting story of your own? Email Olivia and provide a brief summary of your story, and we will contact you if we’d like to tell your tale. We’re interested in all sorts of stories, too! Sad, happy, exhilarating, inspiring or educational— we’d like to know about your story and share it with the community!
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