Returning Hope

By Jonathan Gurwitz- San Antonio Express-StarDecember 8, 2008

Staff Sgt. Bill Kleinedler
(Photo Credit: U.S. Army) VIEW ORIGINAL

Staff Sgt. Bill Kleinedler saw a white sphere float down between his chest and the steering wheel of the Humvee he was driving. And he heard a voice tell him calmly, "Get out of the truck."

His team from the 414th Civil Affairs Battalion had completed a mission providing medical care to the residents of Tarmiyah, 30 miles north of Baghdad. His convoy was rolling out of town, headed back to Camp Taji, when Kleinedler's vehicle struck an IED.

The blast punched a hole in the bottom of the truck, blowing fuel inside and igniting it. The white sphere was a chunk of phosphorous from the explosive. His door jammed. Kleinedler was burning up.

The voice kept telling him to get out. After struggling with the latch, the door finally popped open. Kleinedler rolled out, putting out his flames. His team leader was thrown from the vehicle with minor injuries. The gunner and two interpreters were killed.

Then began a journey that more than 4,000 service members have made from battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. Two years and five surgeries later, Kleinedler has hope.

It wasn't always so. The Michigan native had suffered third degree burns to his face, neck and arms. The painful recovery and rehabilitation process is mental as well as physical. "There was a time when I just sat in the barracks," Kleinedler says. "I could have easily slipped off into that deep end of depression."

For men and women like him and their loved ones, the Warrior and Family Support Center is a haven. Shoe-horned into a 1,200-square-foot room in the Powless Guest House at Fort Sam Houston, the center is part recreation room, part counseling center, and all caring.

Wounded warriors come in under the watchful eye of program manager Judith Markelz, whom they affectionately call "Mom." Markelz knew that Kleinedler had been a fine artist before deploying to Iraq. So she gave him a duty: teach a drawing class for other wounded warriors and their families.

Kleinedler's activity in the cramped quarters coincided with a dream of San Antonio developers Steve and Les Huffman - to give the center and its wounded warriors a bigger, better home. Following a process similar to the one that allowed private interests to build the Center for the Intrepid and Fisher Houses and turn them over to the Army, the Huffmans made a proffer to build a new Warrior and Family Support Center.

They created a non-profit organization - the Returning Heroes Home. Their board raised $3.6 million in cash contributions and another $1.5 million in in-kind contributions from more than 5,000 individuals, businesses and foundations.

On Monday, the Army will take the keys, and the doors of the new 12,000-square-foot Warrior and Family Support Center will open. The new building will have classrooms for continuing education, a state-of-art videogame center, therapeutic gardens and plenty of space to serve the wounded warriors and their families.

"We want to change the environment," Steve Huffman says. "The mission of this facility is to have an impact on the lives of these kids."

The organization is currently working to secure an additional $500,000 to complete Phase I, and is seeking another $1 million for a Phase II expansion.

"I started drawing. I started doing things," Kleinedler says of his time in the old center. "If I didn't have that, I would be in that depression mode - I would be the guy sitting in the barracks watching the paint dry, watching TV, getting drunk, just to pass the time. Time goes so slow, moments tick by when you're still under the knife and you get more surgeries and you're in and out of the hospital."

Now Kleinedler is doing more than drawing and painting. The Huffmans commissioned him to produce a work for the lobby of the new Warrior and Family Support Center. The 18-foot metal sculpture depicts a swarm of butterflies - a symbol of renewal particularly important to the wounded warriors and their families.

Kleinedler still faces another round of surgeries in the spring. But after the dedication of the new center, he is headed to his new home and art studio in Massachusetts - and a future wide open with possibility. "I was always thinking of fine art stuff you hang on your wall. This has launched me into a whole new realm of thinking."

The name for his new sculpture: "Hope." A grateful nation owes that to him - and to the thousands of other wounded warriors who have sacrificed so much.

jgurwitz@express-news.net

For more information on the Returning Heroes Home project, visit http://www.returningheroeshome.org/.

Copyright 2008 San Antonio Express-News, reprinted with permission.

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Returning Hope