Dinwiddie High football players honor injured Marine who made history with re-enlistment
Injured Dinwiddie High Marine honored at football game
Richmond Times-Dispatch
00:0000:31
P. KEVIN MORLEY/TIMES-DISPATCH
Marine Cpl. Matt Bradford said it meant the world to him that ahead of the game Dinwiddie head football coach Billy Mills (center) let him speak to the players on the team for which he used to play.
Posted: Monday, November 28, 2016 10:35 pm
By VANESSA REMMERS | Richmond Times-Dispatch
DINWIDDIE Cody Mills felt the pressure of Cpl. Matt Bradford’s hand on his shoulder.
The 17-year-old slowed his pace and shifted his gaze toward Bradford’s prosthetic legs to monitor the Marine’s progress as they walked together to the center of the football field.
Bradford is Mills’ senior by 13 years. The 30-year-old survived combat in Iraq. He has endured the pain of losing his eyesight and legs from a roadside bomb. He is now a father of three.
To Mills, Bradford is a towering figure, a Marine who has overcome overwhelming odds. But when Bradford placed his hand on the young football captain’s shoulder for guidance, it became clear to Mills how much Bradford depended on him.
“It was just this vulnerable moment,” Mills said. “I’ve never been part of something like that.”
The Dinwiddie High School football captain led Bradford to the middle of the football field for the coin toss. It had been years since Bradford attended one of his former high school team’s games. The cheers for Bradford from the packed bleachers could be heard over the band’s music.
Bradford now goes to school alongside many teenagers as a student at the University of Kentucky. Most of the time, he said, the young students don’t know what to say when they meet him.
But flanked by the young football captains who have dedicated their season to him and his Marine Corps unit, Bradford got goose bumps.
***
Bradford was just three years older than Mills is now when he lost his sight and legs.
“I was so young when I got hurt,” he said.
Bradford, then 20, was patrolling a road in northwest Iraq near the Syrian border. He saw a white bag leaning against a tree, a signal used by those who planted the device to mark its location. He turned around to alert the Marines behind him. When he turned back, he saw the wires and the pipes of the roadside bomb sitting in the ditch just below him.
Shrapnel went through his eyes. He woke up in a hospital still feeling a tingling in his legs, but his father told him he no longer had his legs. He wondered why he was blindfolded. His doctors informed him that he had also lost his eyesight.
“I want to walk again,” he kept repeating. He didn’t care about his blindness. He just wanted his legs back.
Over time, he ate less and became withdrawn. Hoping to avoid his mood swings, the nurses drew straws to see who would have to go into his room and draw blood.
“I didn’t want to know anybody,” he said.
Several years before, Bradford was just a high schooler in Dinwiddie County. He didn’t really know what he wanted to do until the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Eventually, his favorite movie became “Black Hawk Down.”
He played as a receiver and on the special teams for the Dinwiddie football team during his junior and senior years. He was also first seed for the double and singles tennis teams at Dinwiddie High.
Football didn’t feel much of a stretch from the Marine Corps that he dreamed of joining.
“Everything I learned playing football, I carried over to the Marine Corps. The love of your brother; you got their back and they have your back. It was you against the world. They take a bullet for you, and you take a bullet for them,” he said.
He signed up for the Marine Corps as soon as he turned 18.
Two years later, he was lying in a hospital in San Antonio without his legs and his sight, and felt as if he had lost his purpose. Fighting two more battles — one to adapt to his blindness and another to adapt to losing his legs — felt like too much.
A Marine who worked with the Wounded Warrior organization started coming to his hospital room. He talked to him about everything except his injuries. For the first time, someone could make him laugh. One day, a hospital corpsman brought in brownies. Bradford ate two of the treats, and began to remember that there was life outside the hospital doors.
He ventured outside his hospital room, meeting a soldier who had been burned over 70 percent of his body. He couldn’t open a Gatorade bottle, and he would be in and out of surgeries for the rest of his life, Bradford said. But he kept telling Bradford that he would rather be burned than blind.
That same man cheered Bradford on when he first stood on his prosthetic legs. As he wobbled and worried over his crooked walk, Bradford’s physical therapist told him, “I’m never going to let you fall.”
“That kind of reassured me. You just learn to put your foot right in front of you. You never know what that next step is going to be,” Bradford said. “I realized that anything that a regular person with legs and eyes does, I can do. I’ve come so close to dying, that that is how I’m going to live my life now. I feel like if I sit still, you might as well put me in the ground.”
Several years later, Bradford became the first blind double amputee to re-enlist in the Marine Corps. As is tradition, Bradford was allowed to say a few words as a civilian before re-enlisting.
“Sign me up, sir,” he said.
***
He worked with the Wounded Warrior group for several years, hoping to help heal wounds of other Marines the way the Marine in the hospital helped heal his.
He also concentrated on healing himself.
Several years ago, he returned to Iraq as a participant in a therapy program that seeks to allow soldiers and Marines to confront the places where they were injured and experienced trauma. At that time, he had been having nightmares, reliving the moments just before the bomb exploded.
This time, he intended to leave Iraq on both feet rather than on a medevac. He visited the Air Force Theater Hospital where he was first flown and talked to the medical staff who now worked there. In his uniform, he shook hands with scores of Marines.
As the return flight flew over Iceland, the pilot appeared. Bradford said he told him and the others that he had some news. Osama Bin Laden had been killed. They toasted with champagne glasses engraved with the word “United.”
***
Sometimes, it is easy for Bradford to feel lost in the “real world.” It’s easy to drown in all that he has lost.
He now wishes that he had his eyesight more than his ability to walk so that he could see his children. He met his wife, Amanda, while working in North Carolina for Wounded Warrior.
But he is always quick to find a silver lining.
“Maybe my blindness is kind of shielding me seeing my injuries, which may depress me,” he said.
He has sky-dived, and regularly participates in races, such as the Marine Corps Marathon.
In late October, the Dinwiddie football players made it easy for him to find another silver lining.
“For a coach who I’ve only met once to bring you back and let you speak to your team, that meant the world to me. I’ve spoken to teams before, but none was more special than speaking to players of the high school team I played for,” Bradford said.
He is one of several military personnel the football team has honored. Coach Billy Mills also recalled one father who had a whiteboard tracking his son’s football team scores from his station overseas.
“I wanted my boys to be able to see this man and know what it is to be persistent and resilient. I just think about some of these guys on my team, who’ve got dads and moms overseas. I can’t imagine missing my son’s game,” said Mills, who is the father of Cody Mills, the team captain who guided Bradford onto the football field for the coin toss.
Before the game, in the locker room, Bradford told Cody Mills and the other players that they needed to win against Petersburg that night because the city school always managed to “whup them” when he was a student. Dinwiddie won that night, 49-0.
[email protected] (804) 649-6243
Injured Dinwiddie High Marine honored at football game
Richmond Times-Dispatch
00:0000:31
P. KEVIN MORLEY/TIMES-DISPATCH
Marine Cpl. Matt Bradford said it meant the world to him that ahead of the game Dinwiddie head football coach Billy Mills (center) let him speak to the players on the team for which he used to play.
Posted: Monday, November 28, 2016 10:35 pm
By VANESSA REMMERS | Richmond Times-Dispatch
DINWIDDIE Cody Mills felt the pressure of Cpl. Matt Bradford’s hand on his shoulder.
The 17-year-old slowed his pace and shifted his gaze toward Bradford’s prosthetic legs to monitor the Marine’s progress as they walked together to the center of the football field.
Bradford is Mills’ senior by 13 years. The 30-year-old survived combat in Iraq. He has endured the pain of losing his eyesight and legs from a roadside bomb. He is now a father of three.
To Mills, Bradford is a towering figure, a Marine who has overcome overwhelming odds. But when Bradford placed his hand on the young football captain’s shoulder for guidance, it became clear to Mills how much Bradford depended on him.
“It was just this vulnerable moment,” Mills said. “I’ve never been part of something like that.”
The Dinwiddie High School football captain led Bradford to the middle of the football field for the coin toss. It had been years since Bradford attended one of his former high school team’s games. The cheers for Bradford from the packed bleachers could be heard over the band’s music.
Bradford now goes to school alongside many teenagers as a student at the University of Kentucky. Most of the time, he said, the young students don’t know what to say when they meet him.
But flanked by the young football captains who have dedicated their season to him and his Marine Corps unit, Bradford got goose bumps.
***
Bradford was just three years older than Mills is now when he lost his sight and legs.
“I was so young when I got hurt,” he said.
Bradford, then 20, was patrolling a road in northwest Iraq near the Syrian border. He saw a white bag leaning against a tree, a signal used by those who planted the device to mark its location. He turned around to alert the Marines behind him. When he turned back, he saw the wires and the pipes of the roadside bomb sitting in the ditch just below him.
Shrapnel went through his eyes. He woke up in a hospital still feeling a tingling in his legs, but his father told him he no longer had his legs. He wondered why he was blindfolded. His doctors informed him that he had also lost his eyesight.
“I want to walk again,” he kept repeating. He didn’t care about his blindness. He just wanted his legs back.
Over time, he ate less and became withdrawn. Hoping to avoid his mood swings, the nurses drew straws to see who would have to go into his room and draw blood.
“I didn’t want to know anybody,” he said.
Several years before, Bradford was just a high schooler in Dinwiddie County. He didn’t really know what he wanted to do until the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Eventually, his favorite movie became “Black Hawk Down.”
He played as a receiver and on the special teams for the Dinwiddie football team during his junior and senior years. He was also first seed for the double and singles tennis teams at Dinwiddie High.
Football didn’t feel much of a stretch from the Marine Corps that he dreamed of joining.
“Everything I learned playing football, I carried over to the Marine Corps. The love of your brother; you got their back and they have your back. It was you against the world. They take a bullet for you, and you take a bullet for them,” he said.
He signed up for the Marine Corps as soon as he turned 18.
Two years later, he was lying in a hospital in San Antonio without his legs and his sight, and felt as if he had lost his purpose. Fighting two more battles — one to adapt to his blindness and another to adapt to losing his legs — felt like too much.
A Marine who worked with the Wounded Warrior organization started coming to his hospital room. He talked to him about everything except his injuries. For the first time, someone could make him laugh. One day, a hospital corpsman brought in brownies. Bradford ate two of the treats, and began to remember that there was life outside the hospital doors.
He ventured outside his hospital room, meeting a soldier who had been burned over 70 percent of his body. He couldn’t open a Gatorade bottle, and he would be in and out of surgeries for the rest of his life, Bradford said. But he kept telling Bradford that he would rather be burned than blind.
That same man cheered Bradford on when he first stood on his prosthetic legs. As he wobbled and worried over his crooked walk, Bradford’s physical therapist told him, “I’m never going to let you fall.”
“That kind of reassured me. You just learn to put your foot right in front of you. You never know what that next step is going to be,” Bradford said. “I realized that anything that a regular person with legs and eyes does, I can do. I’ve come so close to dying, that that is how I’m going to live my life now. I feel like if I sit still, you might as well put me in the ground.”
Several years later, Bradford became the first blind double amputee to re-enlist in the Marine Corps. As is tradition, Bradford was allowed to say a few words as a civilian before re-enlisting.
“Sign me up, sir,” he said.
***
He worked with the Wounded Warrior group for several years, hoping to help heal wounds of other Marines the way the Marine in the hospital helped heal his.
He also concentrated on healing himself.
Several years ago, he returned to Iraq as a participant in a therapy program that seeks to allow soldiers and Marines to confront the places where they were injured and experienced trauma. At that time, he had been having nightmares, reliving the moments just before the bomb exploded.
This time, he intended to leave Iraq on both feet rather than on a medevac. He visited the Air Force Theater Hospital where he was first flown and talked to the medical staff who now worked there. In his uniform, he shook hands with scores of Marines.
As the return flight flew over Iceland, the pilot appeared. Bradford said he told him and the others that he had some news. Osama Bin Laden had been killed. They toasted with champagne glasses engraved with the word “United.”
***
Sometimes, it is easy for Bradford to feel lost in the “real world.” It’s easy to drown in all that he has lost.
He now wishes that he had his eyesight more than his ability to walk so that he could see his children. He met his wife, Amanda, while working in North Carolina for Wounded Warrior.
But he is always quick to find a silver lining.
“Maybe my blindness is kind of shielding me seeing my injuries, which may depress me,” he said.
He has sky-dived, and regularly participates in races, such as the Marine Corps Marathon.
In late October, the Dinwiddie football players made it easy for him to find another silver lining.
“For a coach who I’ve only met once to bring you back and let you speak to your team, that meant the world to me. I’ve spoken to teams before, but none was more special than speaking to players of the high school team I played for,” Bradford said.
He is one of several military personnel the football team has honored. Coach Billy Mills also recalled one father who had a whiteboard tracking his son’s football team scores from his station overseas.
“I wanted my boys to be able to see this man and know what it is to be persistent and resilient. I just think about some of these guys on my team, who’ve got dads and moms overseas. I can’t imagine missing my son’s game,” said Mills, who is the father of Cody Mills, the team captain who guided Bradford onto the football field for the coin toss.
Before the game, in the locker room, Bradford told Cody Mills and the other players that they needed to win against Petersburg that night because the city school always managed to “whup them” when he was a student. Dinwiddie won that night, 49-0.
[email protected] (804) 649-6243
