Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Finding Answers: Handsmart: Breaking Down Barriers Forged by Fire
Finding Answers: Handsmart: Breaking Down Barriers Forged by Fire
Living With Limb Loss | Family Matters | Honor, Valor, Sacrifice | Health & Well-Being | Technology | Perspectives
Finding Answers 27
wearing spring-loaded braces, trying to slowly coax his
I want Scouts to see that I didn’t give knees back into proper alignment, but the maddeningly
up, not on myself and not on them. slow process hasn’t discouraged him from learning how
to walk for the third time in his life.
Every day I strap these braces on and
Where did he achieve the balanced, thoughtful
push these contractures back towards sensibility that allowed him to take it in stride?
zero, it hurts. It’s hard work and it’s Argument. While he was leading his first Scout troop,
painful. But I think about camp, he was also president of Sacred Heart University’s
about the living I’ll do once I get Debate Society, earning a reputation as such a fierce
competitor that he was one of the first four Americans
back on my foot again. chosen to represent the U.S. at the inaugural World
Masters Championship.
That’s the George Oldroyd over 2,000 boys have known
“Among other things, it taught me not to be a big
over 25 years of Scoutmastership: good-natured,
believer in coincidences,” he says. “I’m alive, and after
good‑humored, but behind the mischievous smirk,
everything else, that can’t possibly be an accident. It has
intense, mad determination. That’s how he says he
to be for a purpose.” Between countless campfires and
survived his harrowing ordeal: “The wound care staff
a thousand more arguments with the most promising
did everything they could – IV antibiotics three times a
young people in the world, the big man has become
day, hyperbaric oxygen – but nothing was slowing down
adept at telling a story.
the infection. One morning, I woke up so sick that my
wife practically had to carry me to the car.” In fact, on the very day he was injured – 25 years to the
day after he was commissioned to lead Troop 63 – he
In renal failure, it took 10 days of dialysis before he was
told his friends on Facebook about his plans to write a
stable enough for them to amputate his leg below the
book: Being Prepared. It was meant to be about his boys
knee. Further setbacks in his physical therapy cost him
and what Scouting meant to them as they adventured
25 degrees of range of motion in both legs, and a piece
their way through their lives, making a strong argument
of his remaining foot. He now spends most of each day
in favor of Scouting as a way of life.
Then he logged off Facebook, and, heading to the
hospital for his weekly infusion, he embarked instead
on an adventure of his own that underscores the point
his book will make, and the point his conduct has made
repeatedly: that Scouting can empower any young
person to do worthy and amazing things.
It’s been two years since Oldroyd lost his leg, but
he won’t accept the two Honor Medals until he can
stand up and walk on stage. One might be forgiven for
thinking his reluctance has more to do with vanity, but
his reasons are predictably calculated.
“I want Scouts to see that I didn’t give up, not on myself
and not on them. Every day I strap these braces on and
push these contractures back towards zero, it hurts.
It’s hard work and it’s painful. But I think about camp,
about the living I’ll do once I get back on my foot again.
Feet? Foot?” As usual, he’s joking, even in the midst of
Finding Answers 29