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“Apparently they hit my flight controls, because I couldn’t pull out of the dive,” says Ron. “We probably hit the trees at 200 or 250 miles an hour.”
“It looked like the jungle just opened up, we went into it, and it closed up,” remarks Ron. “You couldn’t even tell where we went in.”
The Cobra literally came apart in the crash, with only the cockpit remaining intact. Badly injured and bleeding, Ron managed to crawl out of the aircraft, but the excruciating pain made it impossible for him to move any farther. Ultimately, he passed out.
Moments later, Ron’s copilot, Terry McDonald, regained consciousness. Dazed and disoriented, Terry staggered toward a clearing in the trees to try to get his bearings. What happened next was a soldier’s worst night-mare—the enemy lay in wait, and Terry was captured. Tragically, he would never be heard from again.
Back at the wreckage, however, Ron remained unconscious. In their haste, the enemy soldiers mistakenly left him for dead.
When he finally awoke, hours later, Ron was confused and unsure of where he was. “You know how in the movies, they say, ‘Where am I?’ That’s just how it was.” Slowly, he discovered the extent of his injuries. “My flight helmet was shattered, which means I hit my head pretty hard,” he comments, “and I felt a real sharp pain in my left leg. I looked down, and the foot was laying flat, even though my leg was straight. When I moved it, the foot flopped all the way over. I could see that half of my boot was gone, that I was bleeding quite a bit. I knew I had to stop this bleeding or I was going to die.”
Weak, immobile, and losing more and more blood, Ron knew that it was only a matter of time before he would die or the enemy would return. Summoning up his remaining strength, Ron recalls, “I crawled over to some trees not far from the wreckage. And I put both legs up in the air, against the tree. And that’s how I spent the night.”
“When I awoke, it was morning. It had been raining, and I remember trying to catch some raindrops with my mouth, ’cause I was thirsty,” says Ron. “I began trying to think about how I was gonna get out of there.”
The situation seemed hopeless. Three search-and-rescue missions for the two missing pilots had already failed. One helicopter had been shot down, killing three soldiers. A second was badly damaged, and a third was ambushed when it landed.
Unable to walk, Ron had no choice but to wait and pray. He desperately needed a miracle. A few hours later, his prayers were answered when a fourth army helicopter finally spotted him.
“The door gunner had seen a piece of wreckage, and that’s what made them turn around,” explains Ron. “They sent a medic down on a cable. He hooked me up to a harness, and they hauled me out of there.”
The next thing Ron knew, he was waking up in a MASH-unit field hospital. But his ordeal was far from over.
“It was three days before I gained consciousness. And they did emergency surgery on me.” Doctors did their best to try and save Ron’s leg, but as he tells it, “They told me later they didn’t know if I was gonna make it.”
Ron was shipped to Japan, where doctors performed additional surgery. But the prognosis wasn’t good. Upon his return to the States, Ron would face amputation below the knee.
“I had not realized how seriously I was injured,” reveals Ron. “I saw my flying career going away.”
When Ron was finally returned home, his doctors felt they could save his leg. But it wouldn’t come without a price—the damaged limb had contracted an incurable bone infection, which gave Ron constant pain, and which got progressively worse. “A lot of time was spent on crutches,” Ron says.
Four years and sixteen painful surgeries later, Ron had had enough. He was transferred to a military hospital in Denver, Colorado, where, two days later, his foot and lower calf were amputated. The results were immediate and miraculous.
“By 10:00 A.M. I wanted to get out of bed. And they said, ‘No, you gotta stay in bed, nobody gets out of bed after an amputation.’ I said, ‘I feel fine.’ The next day I was out of my bed and walking on crutches around the hospital, with absolutely no pain. It was like this huge burden had been lifted,” recalls Ron.
Ron’s convalescence was amazing. He was fitted with an artificial limb and, as always, he was determined to defy the odds.
“They’d always have to chase me out of therapy,” Ron remembers. “I’d get down there and I would spend hours. I was determined I was gonna be a good walker.”
Ron became more than just a good walker, however. Soon, he was playing baseball, learning to ski, and running 10K races.
“The attitude I developed,” he says, “was that the artificial leg was now a part of me.”
Eventually, Ron also came to terms with the fact that his flying career was over. But he was still struggling with one unanswered question.
“I was always asking God, you know, ‘Why me? Why did you take my leg?’”
Then in 1992, while on a business trip, Ron came across a newspaper article that helped answer that question. The article described three-year-old Russian twins who’d been born with gangrene in their legs. Both boys had been turned over to an orphanage at infancy—after their legs had been amputated.
“It struck me,” Ron says, “that with all I’d been through over the past couple of decades, I could do something for these two kids that somebody with two good legs couldn’t, because I know what they can do and what they can’t do.
“I got on the phone to my wife and I pleaded with her that we should adopt these kids,” recalls Ron. Next, he contacted the Cradle of Hope, an adoption agency in Washington, D.C., and convinced them that they needed to look no further to place the Russian twins.
“I told everyone that even if it takes more medical care than I thought or if it takes more mental care than I thought, I was gonna bring these boys back and give them an opportunity,” declared Ron.
That August, Ron and his wife boarded a plane to Moscow to bring the boys home.
“I went to the orphanage there to see them,” remembers Ron, “and they were sitting in a double stroller. And the only way to describe it is that they were even more beautiful than even I expected.
“On the plane back, I looked down at these two little guys as they were sleeping, and it just hit me like a lightning bolt, you know … that that’s the purpose. That’s the purpose that God had. That’s why I lost my leg,” says Ron. “Because if I hadn’t, I probably wouldn’t have pursued those two little boys. They wouldn’t have jumped out at me like they did.”
Ron finally felt that he’d found a reason for all of his suffering. He knew that through his own experience, he could give his sons the confidence to rise above their disabilities.
“They tell me often that they wish they could have real legs,” Ron admits. “And when they tell me that, I tell them, well, you know, we’re dealt with what we’re dealt with, and we just have to make the most of it.”
Today the boys, Max and Andy, are fourteen, and they both realize what a special gift their father has given them.
Says Andy, “Dad adopted us because he felt like he can help us. Because, if you have problems, he’ll know what to do.”
“My dad’s my favorite person in the world because he has an artificial leg like I do, and he loves me a lot,” adds Max.
That love has made it possible for Max and Andy Greenfield to have the advantage of a full and active life.
“It doesn’t keep me from doing what I want to do,” says Andy. “I can ride my skateboard, or bike, and sometimes I ride my rollerblades. And I go swimming.”
As Ron looks back on his experience, he is awed by the miracles that have touched his life.
“It’s been a multitude of miracles,” he says. “Surviving the crash, surviving the Vietnamese, and then, I think the final miracle is Andy and Max.
“God put me in the right place at the right time to do another miracle.”
BLIND AMBITION (#ulink_adb33c6c-6d20-5c0b-b765-6e3e32ae0dba)
In early 1993, Lisa Fittipaldi was the picture of success. She had a loving husband, a thriving career, and a very busy schedule.
“At the time,” says Lisa, “I was working forty or fifty hours a week as a professional, and driving to work, and going grocery shopping, and doing the normal things that we all do.”
And then, in March, Lisa’s life was suddenly thrown out of focus.
“I was driving down 1–35,” Lisa recounts, “and there was a semi in front of me, and all of a sudden, the semi disappeared.”
For one terrifying moment, Lisa went completely blind. She dismissed the incident, but a few weeks later, it happened again. Deeply shaken, she called her husband, A1.
“She explained the situation to me,” recalls A1, “that she was driving, and all of a sudden her vision just blacked out, and she almost hit a truck.”
Lisa refused to get back behind the wheel, and during the next month, the episodes became more frequent.
“I thought I was having a brain aneurysm, because one minute I would see something, and the next minute I wouldn’t see it,” Lisa says. “Then the colors would start fading away, and everything became a milky color, like it had a handkerchief over it.”
But her doctors could not pinpoint the exact cause of the problem.
Dr. Michael Nacol explains, “Initially, when she was seen by her eye doctor, she started out with a corneal irregularity that made her vision distorted. Not only did she have hazy vision but her vision field was decreased.”
Lisa underwent several surgeries to cure her condition, but her eyesight continued to deteriorate. And slowly, her world disappeared into complete darkness.
“It was like a grey-black obscurity,” describes Lisa. “Even talking about it makes my stomach go into knots. It is incredibly hard to even describe the kind of panic you have.”
Lisa was eventually diagnosed with a rare form of vasculitis, a disease that was attacking the nerves in her eyes, and that would leave her legally and permanently blind.
“The first thought I had was,” says Lisa, “my life is over. Simple as that. You can’t see, what can you possibly do? Seventy percent of everything you do is done with your eyes first, whether you notice it or not.”
“She broke down into tears,” A1 remembers, “and pretty much knew that in a very short period of time, her world as she knew it was gonna go away. And that’s a hard thing to take.”
Lisa tried desperately to adjust to a life in the shadows. But even the simplest activities had become an enormous challenge.
“After a while,” admits Lisa, “you feel like it’s just not worth the effort. The world is dark, let’s just stay in the bedroom because the space is comfortable, and you know where you are, and why move?”
Adds A1, “She didn’t want to have to fend for herself. It was like, hang up a towel for me, or get me this, or get me that. I think I started getting a little angry at having to do for her when I knew she could care for herself.”
And then, in May of 1995, Lisa received a phone call from a friend asking her to join her at a two-week painting seminar in Louisiana.
“She said, ‘There’s a man out there, and he’s supposed to be very motivational,’” recalls Lisa. “‘And you just sleep in a dormitory and you get away from A1, ’cause you’ve been with him day and night now for a year.’ And I said, Okay, I can do this.”
“The friend never showed up,” A1 continues. “So Lisa, rather than canceling the class, wound up saying, ‘Would you drive me to Louisiana?’”
Lisa attended the seminar on her own, and the two weeks away helped boost her confidence. Although some of her classmates expressed skepticism about a blind person’s ability to paint, Lisa became determined to prove them wrong.
“I said, Well, why not?” recounts Lisa. “Why can’t I do this? If I learned how to get dressed again, and I learned how to eat with a knife and fork again, why can’t I paint?”
“Can darks be luminous, bright, and powerful all at the same time? Yes,” says Al.
With Al’s help, Lisa began absorbing everything there was to know about painting.
“We went through hundreds of volumes of art books, magazines, catalogs,” Al says.
“That’s when I realized how difficult it was to paint if you can’t see what you’re doing,” explains Lisa. “You can’t verify in front of you what you’ve painted. And that’s when I started to teach myself how to feel if a paint pigment and watercolor was yellow, versus blue, versus red.”
Once Lisa memorized the various color formulas, she perfected a technique called “mental mapping,” which helped her find where she was on the canvas. Soon, Lisa was creating beautiful life scenes in intricate detail. And before long, she was displaying and selling her work at art fairs around the country. Lisa’s mysterious ability shocked everyone, including her close friend, Claudia Lane.
“I couldn’t fathom how she could paint with such depth and detail,” says Claudia. “I couldn’t even speak. I didn’t know what to say at that point because it was so amazing. It was like watching a miracle.”
In the summer of 1999, Lisa caught the attention of Jason Siegel, a gallery owner from Austin, Texas.
“One day I received a packet in the mail,” recalls Jason. “I get packets from artists asking me to review their work and consider representing them. And I was very intrigued with the work, you know, very intrigued that she was blind and that she could paint realism.”
Jason arranged to meet Lisa for lunch and quickly agreed to represent her. The very next day, he sold one of her paintings.
“When I would show people these paintings,” says Jason, “I’d say, ‘What do you think of this painting?’ And they’d say, ‘Oh, that’s a beautiful painting. I really like it.’ And I’d say, ‘Well, what would you say if I told you this artist happens to be blind?’ And they’d just be blown away by that and want to know the rest of the story.”
Seven years after her odyssey began, Lisa has become a full-time artist, painting seven hours a day, seven days a week in her studio, “Blind Ambition,” and selling her work through one of the largest galleries in the country. Her incredible transformation amazes even those closest to her.
“It blows you away,” Jason says, “that somebody who can’t even see can paint these most amazing paintings, and get these compositions, and balance—all these things other artists are trying to achieve in their paintings.”
“How she does this is a miracle,” adds Claudia. “She sketches it out in pencil. She puts the color on and she gets this incredible piece of art that is totally unexplainable.”
A1 agrees, “I’m not really sure there is an explanation as to how someone is given a gift. What Lisa has given to me, and what I know she has given to others, is hope for the future. A feeling that life is wonderful and that you should live every moment to the fullest because you never know what’s going to happen.”
“I’m just very fortunate,” concludes Lisa. “There’s always been an angel on my shoulder—or a leprechaun, probably, knowing me. One day I would like to be noted as a good painter, a good artist. That’s what I’m striving for.”
ALL GOD’S CREATURES (#ulink_5ae73312-176a-5f5d-888f-2cdcb7235ec1)
BORIS AND THE BIG APPLE (#ulink_46c60c3f-8a56-5440-bded-b047d6d93b04)
In 1996, Barbara Listenik was living in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with her constant companion Boris, a beautiful mixed-breed boxer.
“I got Boris when he was two years old. He’s the most lovable dog in the whole wide world. He knows when I’m happy. He knows when I’m sad. He’s a very big part of my life. I don’t have children and I’m not married, so he’s like my child. He’s my best friend,” Barbara says.
Just before Christmas, Barbara made arrangements to move to Brooklyn, New York. She was renting a moving van, but decided to send Boris via airfreight to spare him the long drive.
“Boris had never flown before, so I was very worried for him. I did everything that I thought was necessary to get him there safely. I did everything the airline recommended as well.”
That included removing Boris’s identification collar so it wouldn’t get snagged during the flight. Barbara gave Boris one last hug and lured him into the crate with his favorite toy bunny. She was worried for her best friend’s comfort but excited to start her new life with him in Brooklyn.
“My thoughts when Boris was in the air were, Please, please, let him get there safely.”
But when she arrived at LaGuardia Airport to pick him up, her fears became reality.
“The airport staff took me in back and they said, ‘Miss, there’s a little bit of a problem. There was an accident.’ Then the supervisor walks up to a bloody, crunched-up, empty carrier. I knew that they must have dropped him or driven something into him. And my immediate thought was, Oh, my God, is he alive or dead?”
The supervisor told her that Boris had been seen running around on the tarmac and that they had their cargo crew personnel chasing him right then.
“Well,” said Barbara, “he’s going to keep running. You’re never going to get him. He’s scared to death. Just let me go out there—one whistle and he’ll come running to me.”
The supervisor insisted that they had the situation under control. And for the next two hours, Barbara waited anxiously for some word of her injured dog. When the supervisor finally came back out, he had bad news—Boris had evaded the cargo crew and crossed the fence from the tarmac onto the highway. He had last been seen running over the overpass into Corona, Queens.
“You idiots!” screamed Barbara. She ran from the airport in tears and jumped in the car. Alone and heartbroken in a strange city, she drove in circles, searching for Boris. He was lost somewhere off the eastern edge of Manhattan and if Barbara didn’t locate him quickly, he could end up anywhere in New York City.
“Boris had never been in the noisy streets. He’d never been in New York City. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. At first I was looking for his body, and then some kid said he saw this dog that was tan-and-white, running like a bullet. That gave me hope. I said to myself, He’s alive. He’s alive.”
Alive but lost in one of the largest cities in the world.
“I searched all night in the rain and the cold, just walking up and down the streets, calling his name. And on Christmas Eve, I really realized how impossible the situation was. Here I was, this tiny little speck of dust in this big city looking for a lost dog. I’ve never felt so alone in my entire life. I didn’t know what to do. I just kept calling for him, ‘Boris, I know you’re out there. Please come home.’”
On Christmas morning, Barbara returned to the airport.
“I went to the supervisor and said, ‘Okay, we have a situation. What are we gonna do about this? You lost my dog.’ And the supervisor says, ‘Yes, miss, I’m filling out the form now.’ And he just reached under the desk and pulled out a baggage-claim form and said, ‘This is all we can do.’ ‘This is a baggage-claim form,’ I said. ‘Are you telling me my dog is baggage?’ I almost collapsed. My dog is considered baggage! I never knew in a million years that animals were considered luggage, and that the law hasn’t been changed since 1929. I said, ‘This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life! My dog is not a piece of luggage. He’s my baby. He’s like my child.’”
The supervisor just shrugged and apologized again. Immediately, Barbara ran home and went through her boxes, still unpacked, to find pictures of Boris. She pulled out her fax machine and started running off flyers. She spent the rest of Christmas Day putting up missing-dog posters throughout Corona, Queens.
