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.