124
USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION
Marine veteran Charlie Linville and Tim Medvetz attempted to ascend Mount Everest in 2014 and 2015, but failed both times. They succeeded in May.
ACTIVE DUTY
New technology and attitudes toward prosthetics help veterans climb high, run far and return to the action By Cindy Kuzma
C
HARLIE LINVILLE REMEMBERS THE moment he first contemplated his journey from the hospital bed to the top of the world. The retired Marine staff sergeant survived
a roadside bomb explosion in Afghanistan in 2011. He’d endured one surgery after another to try to save his wounded leg. He hated the pain, dreaded the prospect of a lifetime of debilitation and medication. But most of all, he hated what he calls the “pity eyes” — the look others gave him that told him, “No, you can’t.”
COURTESY OF THE HEROES PROJECT
Meanwhile, he observed a friend — a double above-the-knee amputee — train to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa. “I watched his progression and everything it did for him physically, mentally,” Linville said. “I wanted some of that.” In the summer of 2013, Linville decided to have his right foot amputated. “The injury that was the bane of my existence for a year and a half was gone,” he said. In its place, he saw a path forward: “Let the residual limb recover, get a prosthetic limb, learn how to walk, and then the world’s your oyster. Figure out how to live in it and do the things that you want to do.” And what he wanted to do was climb. The day before surgery, he had a Skype call with Tim Medvetz, a former Hells Angels biker and founder of The Heroes Project, an organization that works to improve the care of veterans and active-duty service members. Through The Heroes Project, Medvetz had helped six injured war veterans summit six mountains. He was looking for someone to tackle Mount Everest, a 29,029-foot summit. Linville, it turned out, was his man. (Medvetz himself had summited Everest in 2007, six years after a motorcycle crash that nearly left him an amputee.)