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SUPER BOWL XLIII CARDINALS VS. STEELERS 5 p.m. Sunday, Tampa WMAQ-Ch. 5, WSCR-AM 670
Mike Ditka, Rocky Bleier get message out in Tampa veterans hospital
Ditka, Bleier offer hope on visit to veterans hospital
David Haugh
On the Bears
January 30, 2009
TAMPA — "Steelers" was the second word Kevin Kammerdiener spoke once he came out the coma that lasted six weeks.
" 'Hi' was the first, and 'mom' came way later," Leslie Kammerdiener said Thursday as her eyes gazed at her son in his wheelchair. "He has 25 words in his vocabulary right now."
"Thanks" is near the top of that list.
That was the word Kammerdiener tried to speak several times to Mike Ditka after "Da Coach" signed a football and posed for pictures Thursday during a visit to the James A. Haley Veterans Hospital. After exchanging fist bumps with Rocky Bleier, who had signed a yellow "Terrible Towel," Kammerdiener mouthed the same words of gratitude toward a legend from his favorite team, the Steelers.
"I've been here 243 days, and this is one of the better ones," Leslie Kammerdiener said.
Her son, an Army private in the 173rd Airborne Brigade deployed in Afghanistan, lost a significant part of the left side of his brain May 31 when a suicide bomber drove into his Humvee. The explosion blasted Kammerdiener 35 feet into the air, sending his helmet flying. He landed on his head.
Doctors expected Kammerdiener, 20, to be in a vegetative state the rest of his life if he ever woke up at all.
"So he's doing phenomenal for somebody we never thought would be here," Leslie Kammerdiener said hopefully.
She hails from East Brady, Pa., an hour north of Pittsburgh, and she's homeless now because she had to quit her job to take care of her son. For the last five months she has lived here at the Fisher House residential polytrauma center.
Super Bowl week means different things to different people across America. For Kammerdiener and the 20 other families living in this facility, it has meant the chance to hear from people such as Ditka and Bleier, who have stopped by to offer hope in a place where it can be hard to find.
"This is better for me than it is for them," Ditka said. "It brings me back to reality. I'm a great patriot. I love this country, and anybody who served this country like these guys did, I'll do anything for them."
You won't find patriotism on any NFL injury reports. Its health around the league never has been better.
When the Steelers won the AFC title at Heinz Field, one of the first things Ben Roethlisberger did was thank the U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Ditka's group, Gridiron Greats, recently aligned with the Special Operations Warrior Foundation to increase fundraising and awareness for retired NFL players in need. Look no further than Thursday's announcement that Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the U.S. Central Command, will toss a ceremonial coin before Super Bowl XLIII for more evidence.
With the former team of Pat Tillman, whom some have compared to Bleier, in the Super Bowl, the flag-waving has intensified. All week the tragic tale of Tillman has been revisited to pay tribute to a man who gave up the NFL to defend his country and ultimately lost his life in 2004.
Perhaps no living soul symbolizes the connection between the NFL and the military more than Bleier, who was drafted and sent to Vietnam after graduating from Notre Dame.
On Aug. 20, 1969, Bleier's platoon was ambushed in a rice paddy, and he took shrapnel in his right leg from an enemy grenade. Bleier spent eight months in Ft. Riley, Kan., recovering in a hospital similar to the one he visited Thursday.
His four Super Bowl rings in tow, the former Steelers running back made eye contact with every wounded soldier he met and delivered his patented message: Never give up.
"I can have empathy for what they're going through," Bleier said. "They don't want you to feel sorry for them. They just want you to understand and treat them as a normal person."
So Bleier spoke to Lukas Shook, a 21-year-old Army private, like a guy who pulled up a bar stool next to his wheelchair. He laughed when Shook asked what position he played.
"Have you heard of Terry Bradshaw? Have you heard about Franco Harris?" Bleier said. "I was the other guy."
Shook smiled. He was on duty Nov. 30 in Baghdad when a rocket exploded about 15 feet away. All he remembers was being dragged back to a bunk and feeling blood roll down his face.
"That's when I thought I was going to die," Shook said.
He suffered a head injury and vertebrae fractures so severe that doctors told him he would never walk again. He still wears a breastplate that covers his entire torso. But as Shook firmly shook hands with Bleier, he reported he has begun walking as much as 50 feet without crutches.
On the other side of the room, Ditka was visiting with Jeremy Miller's wife. Miller was flying a Black Hawk helicopter during a routine training exercise at Ft. Campbell, Ky., when it collided with another chopper. He sustained a traumatic brain injury and spinal damage that confines him to a wheelchair.
That was 13 years ago.
"What can I do for you?" Ditka asked.
At that point Ditka stepped aside so he wouldn't block a picture of soldier Mark Lalli posing with Bleier's four Super Bowl rings on his fingers. Lalli, 23, also was wearing two bracelets on his right wrist that belonged to the pilots who didn't survive his helicopter crash. It happened in Aviano, Italy, after Lalli had spent a year in Iraq.
Though a Cleveland native, Lalli was among the first to start chanting "Rocky! Rocky!" as Bleier began to head for the door.
Outside the room, Ditka's face turned redder than usual as he marveled at the progress Kammerdiener, in particular, had made since Da Coach's last visit a few months ago.
"Incredible … his head was basically, half of it was gone," Ditka said. "They'll probably never get back to 100 percent, but the love and cheer they get here, that's special. Not to honor these people and not to remember them this week would be a disgrace."
Always nice to see when the good these players do gets some press vs some bone-head getting in trouble at a club...