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| Warren Macdonald: O & P grads will change many lives |
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE PINELLAS PARK, Fla. (Sept. 10. 2008) -- To double amputee Warren Macdonald, the dedication of St. Petersburg College’s new Bankers Insurance Group Building, home of the J.E. Hanger College of Orthotics and Prosthetics, was the beginning of a process that will change many lives for the better. Macdonald, who lost both his legs more than a decade ago, attended the dedication on Sept. 3. He said the people who graduate from the school will have the rare opportunity to help amputees and others see the world in an entirely new light. “What these guys do is more than build limbs,” he said. “In the bigger picture, they change the way people see the world and help them see new opportunities they may not have seen before. “Something like this levels everything you know,” he said. “You can see it as the end of the world, or you can see it as, ‘Where can I take this?’” Macdonald has taken his own disability a long way from the day he was permanently injured on a remote island off Queensland, Australia in 1997. A huge piece of rock broke loose and landed on his legs, pinning him in a creek bed. His companion hiked back to civilization to get help, but it took the better part of two days for rescuers to reach him. Both his legs had to be amputated above the knee. Once he recovered, however, Macdonald returned to the outdoors and climbing. “I climbed my first peak on my backside,” he said. After that, he was fitted with short prosthetic legs he called “stubbies.” When used in conjunction with short, thick crutches, he said, it “almost put me in four-wheel drive.” He climbed mountains and trekked through swamps before trying the seemingly impossible – a climb of El Capitan, a 3,000-foot vertical rock formation in California’s Yosemite National Park, a climb that at one time was considered impossble. “I did that by doing pull-ups, 2,800 of them,” he said. He has also climbed 20,000-foot Mt. Kilimanjaro and Weeping Wall, a 600-foot frozen waterfall in Alberta, Canada. Robert Menke, chairman of Bankers Insurance Group, a major sponsor of the new building, talked about his own great-grandfather, a double amputee. “I was always very proud of him,” Menke said. “He did the things that you can aspire to do.” “This will be a wonderful facility,” he said. “It will do so much for people who really want to put their lives back together, and soar as high as they can dream.” SPC President Carl M. Kuttler Jr. also spoke, describing the challenges created by a hip condition that afflicted his infant daughter and required her to wear braces on her legs for several years. He also talked of being deeply moved by a visit to a veterans’ rehab facility in the San Antonio, Texas area. Kuttler had high praise for state Sen. Don Sullivan and for Rep. Bill C.W. Young, who spoke at the dedication. The Bankers Insurance Group Building is a 26,000-square-foot structure at 7200 66th St. N, Pinellas Park. It cost $10-million to build and was financed in part by a $250,000 donation from the Hanger Orthopedic Group of Bethesda, Md.; a $500,000 donation from Bankers Insurance Group; and a $2-million federal grant. Both the college and the company are named after James Edward Hanger, the Civil War’s first amputee, who founded the Hanger Company in 1861. ##
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September 10, 2008 |