Ex-medic, amputee Clemons excels in Paralympics - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Ex-medic, amputee Clemons excels in Paralympics

JACKSON, Miss. — Kortney Clemons, then 24, had big plans.

He was nearly finished with his tour of duty as a combat medic for the Army in Iraq. In fact, he already was supposed to have gone home to Little Rock, near Meridian, except for a special Pentagon order, keeping his unit in Baghdad for an unspecified period.

Clemons, a former high school and junior college football cornerback, planned to pursue his first love, football. He was going to volunteer for the University of Southern Mississippi football team, just the way he had volunteered for the Army.

All that changed five days after he was supposed to have gone home: Feb. 21, 2005.

His unit was called to the aid of a wounded soldier whose Humvee had been ravaged by a bomb on a dirt road outside Baghdad. As Clemons prepared the wounded comrade for helicopter evacuation, another bomb exploded, killing three of his fellow medics and blowing off Clemons’ right leg from just above the knee.

Clemons lived — and so did the soldier he was treating. But Clemons’ dream was over.

Nobody plays college football on one leg.

Clemons, now 30, doesn’t feel sorry for himself.

He doesn’t have a college cornerback’s speed, but he’s far faster on one leg than most 30-year-olds on two.

He is, in fact, a U.S. Paralympic champion. He competes as a sprinter in meets around the world. He has won national championships at both the 100- and 200-meter distances. He will compete in New Zealand this winter; his goal is to represent the U.S. in the 2012 Paralympic Games in London.

Such a life-altering injury, under those circumstances, would have ruined a lesser individual. Clemons admits to some moments of quiet despair during his recovery period, first in Germany and later in the United States. A devout Christian, he remembers asking himself over and over what he had done to deserve such a brutal injury.

“I decided that God had a plan for me to make something more of myself,” Clemons said. “It happened for a reason. I had to lose my leg to find the real me.

“When I was in the hospital, I was with one guy who had the same injury when he fell off a boat and lost his leg to a propeller. Another lost his leg in an auto accident. At least I lost my leg doing something that mattered. I felt lucky in that way. It could have happened anywhere; it just happened to have happened in Iraq. I made peace with it.”

Clemons points to a muscular, taller and younger man with corn-rowed hair and a missing leg a few feet away — also participating in a workout at Jackson Prep.

“You see Shaquille [Vance] over there; he was playing sandlot football when his knee snapped, severing an artery,” Clemons said. “He lost his right leg below the knee. You just never know. It can happen to anyone.”

Now, Clemons serves as an inspiration to Vance, who hopes to break Clemons’ U.S. records and set world Paralympic records of his own. Clemons has no doubt Vance will do just that.

“Look at him,” Clemons said. “He’s got those long limbs, and he’s just a natural athlete.”

Indeed, Vance, from the Mississippi town of Houston and a recent high school graduate, won the shot put in his district track meet last spring against two-legged competition. He already is nearing Clemons’ record sprint times only 18 months after his injury.

“You lose one part of your body, and it makes the rest of you stronger,” Vance said, smiling.

Clemons and Vance were two of several Paralympic athletes in the Jackson area recently, having their artificial limbs adjusted by Methodist Rehabilitation Service specialists and prosthetic specialists from Ossur, the Scandinavian-based company that makes artificial limbs suited for athletic competition.

“There’s a definite science to it,” said Clemons, who had several minor adjustments made to his prosthetic leg.

Clemons still has big plans, far beyond Paralympic competition. He has started graduate studies at the University of Kansas, where he will work toward a master’s in curriculum and teaching. Clemons received a bachelor’s degree in therapeutic recreation at Penn State University.

“I know I can’t do this forever,” Clemons said. “I think it’s going to be neat to kind of hand over what I’ve accomplished nationally to another Mississippian. Shaquille has a chance to set all kinds of records, and I’ll help him any way I can.

“When I finish at Kansas, I plan to teach and coach in high schools,” Clemons said.

He’ll coach track and field, of course, but that’s not all.

“I’m going to coach football,” Clemons said, smiling.

“It’s still my first love, and you don’t have to have two legs to coach it.”

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