Veterans Day Gratitude is Right on Target

Even through the darkness that is his daily life, the Vietnam veteran could see the bow in every touch of his fingertips.

He gripped the wooden recurve bow with what was left of his mangled left hand and grabbed the arrow with his right hand, twirling the carbon shaft to find the right place to slide the knock into the string. Click. Lift. Draw. Anchor. Release. Bang!

Somehow, even blind, he popped the balloon pinned to the bull’s-eye. Three times.

I had heard about the Veterans Day archery shoot at The Loft, the archery club where I shoot every Saturday, but the last four Novembers, I’ve been in Poland promoting a book and missed it.

This year, I showed up to help coach a group of blind and visually impaired vets from the Blind Rehabilitation Center at the VA in Cleveland. Eight veterans showed up for a morning of archery followed by lunch.

George Brummell never shot a bow before but taught me more than I taught him. His hands felt around the bow, every crevice and crack to explore the weapon before he drew it back to fire an arrow into a target 9 meters away. It was tricky. He can’t see a thing.

Before we started, I stood at the target and spoke so he could hear how far away it was. With every shot, I gently guided his arm to center the bow in front of the target.

George is completely blind. A land mine stole his vision and a chunk of his left hand and left him with burns over 60 percent of his body. He has spent 53 years blind, and he has lived the hell out of every one of them with joy, laughter and determination. He’s traveled to Singapore, Amsterdam and France. He did a tandem bike ride through Italy, some of it with Tour de France winner Greg LeMond.

He handed me a business car with a photo of him in his Army fatigues at 17. He’s the author of the memoir, “Shades of Darkness” he calls a “rowdy, honest, uplifting story of a black soldier’s journey through Vietnam, blindness and back.”

He taught me how to be his escort, “Keep your arm straight down, not bent like you’re carrying a purse,” he said.

Every week when I coach archery, I hear all kinds of excuses for missing the mark. I’ve uttered them myself: My shoulder hurts…The site needs adjusted…I’m having an off day…

George made no excuses. He just took his time to be one with the bow and the string and the arrow, and he popped three balloons.

Three bull’s-eyes from a blind veteran who has never stopped aiming to give life all he has with all he has left.