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Chattanooga: Rolling along

By: Lauren Gregory
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David Uchic

Jesse Hope is a GIMP, and he’s proud of it.

In fact, the severely disabled 37-year-old was so eager to promote his status that he got “GIMP ON THE GO” emblazoned on his windshield, affixed to the back of one of his wheelchairs and tattooed on his leg. Another tattoo declaring him “#1 GIMP” stretches over his shoulders.

In his world - the world of disabled veterans who are athletes - GIMP stands for “G.I., Medically Privileged.”

But the Tunnel Hill, Ga., resident is the first to admit he didn’t always feel that way.

“The first six or eight years I was hurt, I thought my life was over,” said Mr. Hope, who suffered extensive injuries in a car accident just months after his 1991 return from Operation Desert Storm. “I mean, I was just so depressed and angry at the world.”

It took a trip to the National Veterans Wheelchair Games in 1996, where he saw hundreds of people just like him, to snap him out of his funk, and now he wants to help others in situations similar to his.

But he admits it was a tough climb out of the darkness.

First at Erlanger hospital in Chattanooga and then at the Atlanta VA Medical Center, the formerly burly soldier - whose pride and career aspirations had been based almost entirely on his 255-pound frame shriveled to 95 pounds.

Staff Photo by Allison Kwesell Jesse Hope practices wheelchair tricks at a park near his home in Tunnel Hill, Ga. Mr. Hope suffered injuries in a car wreck 17 years ago and has been slowly recovering since. He is now trying to raise money to start a handcycling team to help others through the same journey.

He was comatose for six months, and there seemed little chance of survival. In fact, Mr. Hope recalled, doctors told his mother to put him in a nursing home because he would end up “a vegetable.”

But the family watched him persevere even after an open head wound; a nearly severed lip; rods in his arm, a leg and his back; four crushed vertebrae; multiple lung collapses; a bruised heart muscle; dislocated internal organs and two strokes.

Through years of intense therapy, he relearned how to talk and practiced maneuvering with a wheelchair and even a walker.

Such a situation really can bring down the weak of heart, said David Uchic, spokesman for Paralyzed Veterans of America, a national service and advocacy organization.

“What are their options? Stay at home and become a recluse, or get out the bottle or get involved with drugs,” Mr. Uchic said. “It’s the pity thing. It’s easy, I would think, if you’re sitting in a wheelchair, to feel like you’re not part of the mainstream.”

That’s why his organization and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs co-sponsor the National Veterans Wheelchair Games annually.

“It makes you feel like you’re part of something, that you’re included,” Mr. Uchic said.

SPARK TO ACTION

The Wheelchair Games first had that effect on Mr. Hope after he attended them for the first time in 1996, when a trainer at the VA Hospital’s gym persuaded him to enter by luring him with the prospect of a free trip to Seattle, Wash.

“I rolled into the hotel lobby, not thinking anything,” he recalled. “But I looked out, and there’s over 500 wheelchairs in the lobby. My attitude ... boom ... changed,” he said, snapping his fingers to indicate an instant revelation. “There were people like myself. We’re all veterans, we’re all in wheelchairs. We all have the same challenges, and some cope better, some cope worse, but we all have similarities.”

That was all it took for Mr. Hope to find a purpose again, said his good friend, Kelly McCoy of Dayton, Tenn. Mr. Hope since has competed in several more wheelchair games, most recently in Omaha, Neb., from July 25-29.

In those Omaha games, Ms. McCoy said, he took home silver medals in weightlifting and shotput, along with bronze medals in air rifling, javelin and slalom, an obstacle course for wheelchair-bound athletes. He also won the Endeavor Award for goodwill, she said.

“He thinks he’s Superman sometimes,” she said.

But Mr. Hope is truly a role model, Ms. McCoy said. In a cruel twist of fate, his brother was paralyzed from the chest down in an accident in the late 1990s, prompting Mr. Hope to step up and serve as mentor to him.

He also often is asked to speak to new patients at the VA Hospital, she said. Doing so has inspired him to create a support group for those in wheelchairs in his own community.

“The idea is that it’s a mentor group,” Ms. McCoy said. “He would head it up, and it would be a peer support group to help people to adjust to life in a wheelchair, mentally, physically and emotionally.”

Mr. Hope already has a name for his new group, which would meet at least twice a month, she said: Rolling NOW, the “NOW” standing for “New and Old Wheelers.”

The next step after that is raising money to buy a handcycle, which functions much like a bicycle and would provide Mr. Hope with a new challenge to bring to the group.

“We could actually start a team for this local area and start entering races,” Ms. McCoy said. “That would couple with the support group and give them something to work toward.”

Such a team would provide a great benefit to the disabled community, said Lisa Morgan, who runs programs in wheelchair basketball, tennis and golf through Siskin Hospital for Physical Rehabilitation in Chattanooga.

“Not only does it build up their strength and endurance, but it gives them an opportunity to find something they can work at, to become really successful and feel good about it,” Ms. Morgan said. “It sparks things within them that they have a need for.”

Mr. Hope plans to provide more inspiration by tackling yet another item on his to-do list.

“My long-term goal with the handcycle is the Boston Marathon,” he declared proudly.

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