Disabled vets use kayaking as a form of rehab in Kentucky

From The State-Journal. (A similar program exists in Texas.) In the picture, Ben Brown, 27, is carried to Elkhorn Creek by Allen Kirkwood, left, Mike Gambrel, center, and Nathan Depenbrock of Canoe Kentucky before kayaking with Team River Runner.

Lexington’s Ben Brown, a 27-year-old disabled Navy veteran, came to Knight’s bridge July 8 to take a biweekly kayaking journey with other veterans on Elkhorn Creek.

But he didn’t know the new black kayak waiting for him on the creek bank was a gift from Jackson Kayaks and Canoe Kentucky.

When Nathan Depenbrock of Canoe Kentucky told him, Brown smiled, saying, “Awesome.”

Just being able to kayak is an incredible pleasure, says Brown, who was injured in a 2002 motorcycle accident in Naples, Italy, and is paralyzed from the waist down.

On a trip for coffee, Brown’s motorcycle hit “an unsecured manhole cover and ran into a wall and went over the wall,” he says. “I broke my lower three lumbar (vertebrae).”

July 8’s two-hour kayaking trip was part of Team River Runner Lexington.

“It’s a program we do with the Lexington VA,” Depenbrock says. “We use kayaking as a form of rehab for soldiers affected by war.

“The national program focuses on vets returning from Afghanistan and Iraq, but we are open to any veterans. We consistently get over 10 vets a week and 10 to 20 volunteers.”

Linda Tribble, compliance officer at VA in Lexington, says Ben “is a great guy. You just love him the minute you meet him.

“He has said when he’s in a wheelchair, he’s looking up at people all the time. But when he’s in a boat he’s eye level with you and on the same playing field.

“The freedom kayaking gives him is phenomenal. He’s out with everybody else as an able-bodied paddler.”

Team River Runner was founded in 2004 by Washington, D.C., area kayakers who worked with veterans at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

“It has spread across the country with different chapters, and it started out with one guy and a vision,” Brown says. “Joe Mornini went down to Walter Reed and took injured veterans out of hospital beds and put them in kayaks in (swimming) pools for rehabilitation.”

Brown said he met Mornini at a VA sponsored summer sports clinic in San Diego last year.

“That was the first time (since his accident) I ever participated in an organized disabled sports event,” he says. “There were so many opportunities in recreation – sailing, surfing, kayaking, track and field.

“It’s awesome. There are really no barriers. You just have to figure out how to do it. Kayaking is cool for me because I’m moving in the water. Instead of being a spectator, now I’m a participant. I never thought I’d be a kayaker.”

Brown’s wife, Tiffany, was going with him on Wednesday’s trip on the Elkhorn in Franklin County.

“This has been great for Ben to get out and be active,” Tiffany says. “Before his accident, he was really active and liked doing things outdoors.

“After his accident, he felt he was limited with what he could do and he felt he spent a lot of time sitting on the sidelines. This gives him the ability to get involved and be in action.”

Ben Brown, a Scott County High School graduate, just received his bachelor’s in communications and leadership development from the University of Kentucky.

He says he would like to get into “public relations or government relations” work.

Many of the Team River Runner Lexington volunteers are members of the Bluegrass Wildwater Association of Lexington. Each veteran who goes out in a kayak has at least one volunteer teammate.

“We really couldn’t be doing this without them,” Tribble says. “They’ve donated money, time and taken it on as their cause.”

In winter, the local Team River Runner veterans practice their kayak rolling skills at The Pavilion indoor pool in Georgetown, Depenbrock says.

“The pool director said she had a friend whose dad is a Vietnam veteran and is in a model airplane club in Carrollton, and the club decided to donate money to pay for the pool sessions,” Depenbrock says. “That was really neat.”

Depenbrock says it’s a wonderful program.

“For me personally, the best part is the feeling that you’re giving back to someone who has given so much in the first place,” Depenbrock says.

“These veterans I work with, I absolutely think of them as heroes. They’re good people, they’re genuine. The reward they give me through a smile and appreciation is one million times worth me doing the program.”

This summer, the veterans also will kayak on the Kentucky River at Clay’s Ferry, Boonesboro, High Bridge and Frankfort; and again on Elkhorn Creek in Franklin County occasionally, depending on the water level, Depenbrock says.

Other Team River chapters are in Augusta, Ga.; San Antonio; Tampa Bay; St. Louis; Seattle; Richmond, Va.; Washington, D.C.; and San Diego, Loma Linda and Palo Alto, all in California.