Imagine coming home from war with no injuries. Then three days later a car accident changes everything. WNIJ’s Yvonne Boose has the story of one Poplar Grove veteran who turned his personal tragedy into an opportunity for other disabled veterans: a national sports team.
Noah Currier is a Marine Corps veteran. He was in the infantry. His unit was 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance. In 2003, he returned home from war. A few days later, he was involved in a car accident that left him quadriplegic. This is a form of paralysis that affects all four limbs. At first, he was optimistic about getting back to normal.
“As time went on,” he said, "I wasn't getting any feeling or movement back and then the girl that I had been with for about seven and a half years was killed in a car accident right when I got home from the hospital.”
He had been with her since they were in junior high school.
He started to lose hope. The two accidents pushed him into depression. He isolated himself, which he said made things worse. He was on 14 medications, and he added other substances to the mix. He said he did this for several years but as time went on, he started having other physical problems.
“As a quadriplegic, was dealing with like a lot of bowel and bladder stuff,” he said, “Because I have a neurogenic bowel and bladder that is, you know, impossible to feel or control, and that was just getting worse.”
Currier wasn’t sure if the medication was making his bladder problems worse, so he stopped taking them, including the ones that weren’t prescribed.
“There was like this constant fog or cloud over me,” he explained, “and when you're in that, it's like you can't even imagine what the other side would be like if you just removed all of it, and then that just continued on for several years.”
He said two months of stopping a light switch flipped on and things became clearer.
In 2011, he took a trip to Snowmass, Colorado to participate in an adaptive skiing Winter Sports Clinic. Adaptive sports are modified so that individuals with physical, visual or cognitive disabilities can participate. He remembered sitting on top of a mountain and looking down 12,000 feet.
“I felt fear and adrenaline and camaraderie and all of these things that I felt like I had been missing,” he explained, “I did that for five days straight and had, you know, an incredible time, and met other people.”
Currier described it as a key that unlocked a door to a brighter future. And he wanted to make copies of that key to give it to others. At the event he met other disabled veterans who were in wheelchairs. He talked a few into moving to Illinois to start an organization. The Oscar Mike Foundation encourages disabled veterans to move. The phrase “Oscar Mike” is military jargon that means on the move.
The men — who all had families at home — agreed to come and stay for six months.
“These were veterans, and you know, we were very used to the deployment life,” he added, “and deployments can be six to 18 months, and you go accomplish a mission together.”
Currier was living in a two-car garage. The guys helped him turn that into an office space. They then moved into a small house nearby. They applied for nonprofit status but were told it would take a couple of years, so they created a for-profit company and started selling apparel to advertise the organization.
At another adaptive sporting event, Currier met someone who convinced him to try rugby. He did and one of the players suggested they start an all-veteran rugby team. They call it the Oscar Mike Militia Rugby team. A few years later they were sanctioned by the United States Quad Rugby Association.
The team has players who live across the country, but practices take place in Rockford. Those who live in other states do things at home, but they do come once or twice a month to practice in Rockford.
Bryan Anderson is on the team. He was injured in the Iraq war in 2005.
“I lost both of my legs and my left hand,” he said, “and I spent 13 months at Walter Reed.”
When he finally left the hospital in 2007, he ended up on the cover of Esquire Magazine because of his work as a motivational speaker.
Anderson’s mission is like Currier's. They both want to help disabled veterans move. He met Currier on an airplane in 2015.
Anderson said they kept running into each other after that. Five years later Currie invited him to be a part of the team. Anderson calls Oscar Mike the team’s platoon. He said the team encourages each other.
“And when you say it's an organization for us by us,” Anderson said, “it really means that because we're the ones teaching each other how to get through things.”
The Oscar Mike Foundation has other activities for disabled veterans. One of the programs is full of a week of movement. It doesn’t matter what their disability is.
"They will fly an airplane when they get here, then they will get thrown out of an airplane,” Currier added. “They will go off-roading with hand controls. They will go to a shooting range. They'll do a triathlon, like a modified triathlon.”
A documentary about the rugby team has been screened at a few film festivals. Currier was one of the directors. He said friends and family wanted to see it, so he mentioned it to people at Hard Rock Casino Rockford.
“And they," Currier remembered, "said, 'Done, let's do this, let's make it something really special,'”
There are talks about having it on different streaming outlets. But for now, the documentary “Sum Function” will show at 6 p.m., on Saturday, May 30, at Hard Rock Casino Rockford.