A Place in the Sun for War Veterans

The mortar round that landed on Airman 1st Class Diane Lopes last September in Kirkuk, Iraq, collapsed a lung, perforated an eardrum, broke two bones in her left leg, and left shrapnel wounds in her right knee and both arms. That was the physical damage. The emotional trauma was serious too: “That was a lot harder for me to handle,” she says.

Although the physicians and staff at Walter Reed Army Medical Center treated Lopes's injuries with skill and care, their most effective step may have been a simple introduction to a wounded Army captain named Eivind Forseth. “This is the guy I want you to meet,” Lopes's surgeon told her. Forseth, a Ranger with the 82nd Airborne, had been wounded in a 2005 ambush by a suicide bomber in Iraq. His shattered arm would require 30 surgeries and thousands of hours of rehabilitation. His rage over his injuries and a career cut short only made his recovery more difficult. He tried to focus his restless mind on boyhood memories of wading with his father into the trout streams of Montana. As the vision faded, he'd wonder, Will I ever be able to fly-fish again?

Thanks to Project Healing Waters, an organization founded by a military man who thought the unhurried yet challenging sport would provide essential therapy for injured vets like Forseth and Lopes, the answer was yes. Both of them, and many others, would see their broken bodies and battered spirits restored.

Retired Navy Capt. Ed Nicholson was recuperating from abdominal surgery at Walter Reed in 2004, surrounded by soldiers just returned from Iraq, when he had his brainstorm. “These guys were struggling in the hallways, on crutches, missing arms and legs, suffering head injuries, banged up pretty good,” he recalls.

It occurred to Nicholson that fly-fishing, which he'd taken up in the 1980s, might offer a soothing form of rehab for these wounded men and women. He later learned that Benita Walton, MD, had had a similar idea eight years earlier, when she co-founded a group for breast cancer patients called Casting for Recovery. She discovered that the gentle casting motion of fly-fishing was an excellent activity for cancer survivors, both physically and emotionally. “To fish,” Dr. Walton often said, “is to hope.”

At Walter Reed, Nicholson's fledgling idea quickly won the medical staff's support and became Project Healing Waters. He found instructors to teach the basics of fly-fishing on the hospital lawn. For those who wanted more, volunteer fishing guides would take them to nearby streams and rivers to catch trout.

Forseth knew Nicholson was onto something good. “I was mending, but it wasn't enough,” he says. “I was in desperate need of a mission, and Healing Waters gave it to me.” After his first fishing trip with Nicholson, Forseth began recruiting other soldiers to join.

He started working on Lopes the moment they met. After her doctor introduced her to Forseth, he told her about Project Healing Waters: “You should join us,” he said. “Getting out in nature is a positive thing.”

She started with fly-tying sessions but was hesitant about casting, given that she'd be doing it from a wheelchair. One day, she wheeled herself to a window to see the vets at practice. “I watched them casting for a while and was getting ready to bail when I heard this booming voice behind me: 'Air Force, glad you finally joined us!' ”

Forseth took her out to the lawn. “I put a rod in her hand, and the rest is history,” he says. She had a knack for it, even though she had to cast left-handed because her stronger arm was in a brace. Soon Lopes was demanding a crack at the real thing.

“It was really too cold, but it was so nice to be out on the lake,” she says of her first trip with the group. “I used my walker to stand by the water's edge. It was exactly where I wanted to be.”

A Dog's Life

"Tell Me About the Patient"

The phone call came at 2:47 a.m., jolting me awake. "Hi. I'm Dr. Sarah Keene, the new surgical resident," I heard a voice say. "I've got a dog here, a ten-year-old spayed female German shepherd. She's bloated and, well ... Sorry. My backup's not answering his pager. Can you come in for the surgery?"

Sitting up in bed and reassuring my wife, Kathy, that the call was for me, I said, "No problem, Dr. Keene. Tell me about the patient."

Bloat -- or GDV, for gastric dilatation and volvulus -- is a true veterinary emergency typically occurring in deep-chested dogs like German shepherds, Great Danes, and standard poodles. Often the animal eats a large meal, gets some exercise, and develops a serious problem about an hour later. The stomach, distended by fermented gas, twists around and flips over on its long axis. The effect is catastrophic. The animal tries to rid itself of food and gas, but nothing budges. The stomach keeps expanding unchecked, squashing the lungs and the blood flowing back to the heart. A dog can die in a matter of hours.

"Is she stable?" I asked.

"Not really," said Dr. Keene. "Her pressures are off the charts, and we're having a hell of a time finding a decent vein, let alone placing a catheter." The dog needed fluids to prevent shock.

My feet were now swinging out of bed as I fumbled for clean clothes. "Do your best to pass a stomach tube. I'll be there as fast as I can."

At this hour of the morning, my eyes were piggy and I had a jaunty case of bed head, but thankfully my patients didn't judge me on my appearance. I drove quickly to the Angell Animal Medical Center in Boston, one of the largest veterinary hospitals in the country, where I'd worked for the past 10 of my 25 years in the field. I saw my patient, Sage, lying across a stainless steel surface in the prep area. Her darting eyes were full of fear; an oxygen mask was on her face. As I approached, her broad and bushy tail offered me a couple of friendly beats.

I liked German shepherds and grew up with one. Yet the wagging tail was utterly surprising and endearing to me given this dog's dire condition. I ran my hand across her soft velvety ear, over the chest and down to the drum-tight abdomen. There was a small shaved square on Sage's flank, where an attempt was made to release the stomach gas with a large-bore needle. The skin was taut; clearly the attempt had failed.

"No luck with a stomach tube?" I asked Dr. Keene after we'd quickly shared hellos and introductions.

"Afraid not. She's in bad shape. Heart rate's 220 with occasional VPCs." She was referring to ventricular premature contractions, or abnormal and ineffective heartbeats.

Sage's tail beat a message of thanks as I relieved her of the oxygen mask and inspected her gums. Instead of healthy, vibrant pink tissue, signifying normal blood flow, I saw an ugly muddy purple. "How much intravenous fluid has she had?"

"This is her fourth liter," said Dr. Keene.

Sage's color looked awful. "She's acting like she's near the end," I said urgently. "Start a lidocaine drip, give her some intravenous antibiotics, and knock her down. The faster we get her stomach untwisted, the better. I'm changing into scrubs."

Cattle Farmers Leave Millions Behind

A year ago August, Dave Fuss lost his job driving a dump truck for a small excavation company in west Michigan. Dave and his wife, Gerrie, lived in Alto-a small community (population: 8,694) only 20 miles outside Grand Rapids that even now is more small town than suburb.

Gerrie was still working in the local grade school cafeteria, but work for Dave was scarce, and the price of everything was rising. The Fusses were at risk of joining the millions of Americans who have lost their homes in recent years. Then Dave and Gerrie received a timely gift--$7,000, a legacy from their neighbors Ish and Arlene Hatch. "It really made a difference when we were going under financially," says Dave.

Dave had plowed the Hatches' driveway in the winter and in the summer sat listening to Ish's stories about farming in the old days; still, he had no reason to expect that the Hatches would leave him or Gerrie anything but memories after they died. But the Fusses weren't the only folks in Alto and the neighboring town of Lowell to receive unexpected bequests from the Hatches. There were the Van Weeldens, the Vander Ziels, Jim and Norma Peterson, Dave Fuss's parents, Paul and Lois, and his brother Jerry--dozens of families were touched by the Hatches' generosity. In some cases, it was a few thousand dollars; in others, it was more than $100,000.

It surprised nearly everyone that the Hatches had so much money, more than $3 million-they were an elderly couple who lived in an old house on what was left of the family farm--but no one was surprised by what they did with it. "Money isn't what drove Ish and Arlene," says their friend Steve Vander Ziel, who spent many evenings with his wife, Joan, chatting with the Hatches on their back porch. "This is small-town America, neighbors helping neighbors."

Neighbors helping neighbors-that was Ish and Arlene Hatch's story, in death as in life.

For years after he retired from raising polled Herefords-beef cattle-on his farm in Lowell, Willis "Ish" Hatch spent the harvest riding alongside Steve Vander Ziel in the cab of his combine. They might talk about world events or the price of grain, but often they talked about their town-about families stretching to make house payments or meet medical bills, pay for college, or simply buy groceries. At sundown, Ish would clamber down from the combine and walk back home, full of neighborhood news for his wife, Arlene.

Arlene had deep roots in Kent County, Michigan. Her father, Allen Behler, once owned the same land Ish Hatch later farmed. Allen bought and sold property in town, owned the stockyards, and served as justice of the peace. "You know, it was an age in which people were kinda like entrepreneurs," says Arlene Hatch's 67-year-old niece, Quenda Story, remembering her grandfather. "He did everything."

Ish, by contrast, was something of a newcomer to the area. A veteran of World War II, he was still living with his parents in Macy, Indiana, when he first encountered Arlene, who was teaching school there. "He grew up in hard times," says Quenda. "The whole family worked as farmhands, and there wasn't enough food." Ish would later marvel in his letters home during the war at the abundance of food in Army mess halls.

Ish met Arlene on a blind date that almost ended before it began. A violent storm kicked up the night they were to meet, and Ish, watching the rain lash against the window and the trees bend in the wind, told his sister, "I'm not going."

"You are going," his sister replied, and she sent him on his way.

Ish never regretted it. Nearly six decades later, Ish and Arlene still held hands wherever they went.

After their marriage, Ish and Arlene moved to Lowell. There they lived in the 1853 clapboard farmhouse where Arlene had been born. Ish farmed the surrounding 300 acres, while Arlene taught English and math at the junior high school. Ish collected "gimme" caps-in time more than 150 of them-which he got from local businesses and hung on a wall in the house. Arlene planted four-o'clocks and baked rhubarb pies. There were firehouse breakfasts, Bible studies, craft clubs. At Christmas, Ish hung a lighted star from the silo that could be seen all the way from Interstate 96, nearly a mile north of the farm.

Through the years, the Hatches discreetly paid for local children to attend summer camp when their parents couldn't afford it, and they made certain no child went without warm clothing when winter came to the farmlands south of the Grand River. Fans of the Michigan State Spartans, the Hatches often took some of the local high school boys to football games in East Lansing, about 50 miles away. "Ish and Arlene never asked if you needed anything," says their friend Sandy Van Weelden, 72. "They could see things they could do to make you happier, and they would do them."

Children of the Great Depression, Ish and Arlene were known for their thrift. They thrived on comparison shopping and would routinely go from store to store, checking prices before making a new purchase. "One time they traveled all the way to South Carolina to purchase a pair of easy chairs because they learned the cheapest price was from the manufacturer there," recalls Quenda Story. Nevertheless, she says, "they had a comfortable home."