Angel "Tony" Alvarez of Cleveland, who left both Vietnam and Iraq with war injuries, is joined by his wife, Ivana, at the SPARC watersports day Saturday at the First Lutheran Church camp property in Soddy-Daisy.Angel "Tony" Alvarez was knocked out of two wars 31 years apart while serving with the U.S. Army. Shrapnel from an explosion ripped into his leg during a firefight in Vietnam in 1972, and an improvised explosive device in Iraq in 2003 injured his legs, shoulder, back and face.
That latter explosion left him with hearing and vision loss and with traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder, according to a September 2012 story in the Stars and Stripes publication about his participation in a Stars and Stripers fishing tournament in Maryland. After years of treatments, intense pain and continued disablities, he left the Army for a second time this past January - "medically retired" - and moved back to Cleveland, Tenn.
Alvarez was proof Saturday that you can't keep a good man down, though. He attended his first watersports day conducted by Sports, Arts and Recreation of Chattanooga, a chapter of Disabled Sports USA.
The event is held the third Saturday of every July at the First Lutheran Church Camp at the Possum Creek area of Lake Chickamauga, and children and adults with various disabilities get to water ski with adaptive equipment or to ride boats, jet skis or tubes. About 250 participants and volunteers attended the 24th SPARC watersports day.
Alvarez, an ordained Church of God minister as well as a former Cleveland homicide detective, led the prayer before lunch and also took turns in the water. He tried a triple-bar stand-up ride in the morning, but his knees and back wouldn't let it happen, so he used a sitdown adaptive ski in the afternoon.
Alvarez and his wife, Ivana, first came to Cleveland in 1991, but he left there when he returned to the Army in 2000 to help train military police officers. He was a baseball, basketball, track and field and martial arts athlete in his younger days, so physical activity always has been important to him.
"This is a great thing these people do," he said Saturday, echoing so many others about the event ramrodded by Debbie Hightower with help from her husband, Jerry, and many others who have fallen under her powers of persuasion.
"Without this event some of these individuals would never be in the water," said Jim Cecil, another Vietnam veteran who with his wife, Nancy, were volunteers handling equipment checkout. Cecil, 66, long has been active with SPARC and with wheelchair basketball but can't ski as a result of gunshot wounds to both hips.
Yet another veteran used to physical activity, David Cunningham of Wildwood, Ga., also was at his first SPARC watersports day. But his disability came from a 2012 hang gliding accident - when he "miscalculated" as he approached the landing zone and caught some trees and a two-story house. He has a T-12 (lower area) spinal cord injury, so he still has "decent core muscle strength," he said.
He found out about SPARC while doing a kayaking program for veterans with the city of Chattanooga's therapeutic recreation division headed by Elaine Adams, who as usual was on hand as a volunteer Saturday. Cunningham has done handcycling with SPARC and went on the January snow-skiing trip for the disabled in which SPARC always helps Al Kaye's Knoxville group.
Cunningham, 52, tried water skiing only a couple of times before his injury - 15 years apart - but "did a lot of skiing at the (SPARC) training day a month ago" in anticipation of Saturday's event.
"This was as good a feeling as when I did it able-bodied," said Cunningham, a longtime motorcycle enthusiast and a hiker who has trekked about a third of the Appalachian Trail. "I enjoy a lot of the stuff they've been able to put on for us. There are so many opportunities they've opened."
KayKay Sinclair of Macon, Ga., was a different sort of first-timer Saturday, but her introduction to SPARC was similar. She's been on four of the snow-ski trips and has wanted to come to the watersports day before, "but stuff came up." Now 15, she sustained a spinal-cord injury in a car accident when she was 6.
"I didn't play sports (yet), but I was always outside doing something," she recalled, noting that even after her injury she played baseball in a Miracle league when she was 8.
Saturday she rode a sitdown ski twice and also went tubing. "It was fun. I really enjoyed it," she said.
Ceyla Shoemaker, 25, has been participating in the special water day since she was 8, missing only one year when she was sick. A 2008 Hixson High School graduate who recently moved to Chatsworth, Ga., after her mother remarried, she has cerebral palsy and greatly appreciates any chance to hit the water.
"It's fun, and it shows appreciation for all the disabled people," she said. "Debbie and Jerry have done such a good job getting it all together."
Carol Sim has been the president and CEO of Siskin Hospital for Physical Rehabilitation since Feb. 1, 2014, and said she just had to get involved as a volunteer after learning about former Siskin patients' participation last summer.
"The other hospitals I've been in charge of have had adaptive sports programs," Sim said. "We at the acute rehab side, it's about medical recovery and helping them continue their lives. This is really the other end of the spectrum: You see them with their lives back. I would like to help in a more robust way in the future."
Ed Pickett has helped in many ways since his sister, Debbie Hightower, got him involved from the start. This is inventory weekend at Belk, where he is the loss-prevention manager, but he broke loose in time to help on the water Saturday afternoon.
"It's just great seeing the smiles on the faces when these (participants) do something that would not be possible otherwise," said Pickett, whose wife, Dixie, arrived earlier to help serve lunch.
Belk was a sponsor of the event along with Pepsi, P&S Concrete and Cici's Pizza, with Pickett, Tim Higdon, Steve Hamby and Steve Potts as the respective point men. And Joe Thompson from Knoxville provided the lunch barbecue for the third year in a row. Another who was pulled into SPARC through Al Kaye, Thompson helped SPARC on the water for three years before becoming the chief cook.
"I enjoy doing this stuff," he said. "I'm lucky I get to do a lot of it. We do five or six events with Al every year."
Dr. Stephanie Stegall with Spring Creek Pediatrics was a SPARC water-day volunteer for the third time Saturday. A number of her patients have special needs, and one of her families sparked her interest in the event.
"For children, physical activity certainly improves the function of their minds," she said. "This might be part of a normal weekend for other kids, but these kids don't get this till something like this happens."
For Jason Sellars, who's 37, Saturday was his first time to water ski in 17 years. A pedestrian knocked 160 feet by a car in the Buckhead area of Atlanta when he was a University of Georgia junior, he was not supposed to live - and if he did, he would be in a vegetative state, his mother said Saturday.
"He had closed-head injuries and a broken neck but not paralysis. He had movement in his extremities," Janice Sellars added, explaining that he was "out of our home" for 17 months of extensive medical attention and then went through five and a half years of "extreme" therapies.
Serious academically and "extremely social" before his injury, she said, Jason also had participated in virtually every sport except football, including tennis at the USTA level. He also had volunteered for more than 10 years with Special Olympics.
In Saturday's visit from Atlanta, he used a special ski Kaye brought for him.
"He's so appreciative for the gift of life and for his ability to be active," Janice said.
"His story is a love story, really - an incredible love story," she added, noting a "love for life" and also his "zeal and zest" for things he can do, "a love story" involving his family and devoted friends who have continued to include him in activities and events such as weddings, "and a love story for the goodness and graciousness of the good Lord."
Contact Ron Bush at rbush@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6291.