Chuck Wood is an 83 year-old veteran who served his country in the Coast Guard from 1956-1960 during the height of the Cold War. Sadly, the wheelchair-bound veteran had been unable to leave his home for the past two years because he didn’t have a ramp, and their are steps outside of his front door.
When volunteers from Veterans of All Wars Riders (VAW Riders), a nonprofit group that helps veterans and their families, heard about this, they knew they had to do something.
“It’s great to go out, get some sun, go check my mail,” Wood told Fox News. “It’s been kind of hard because I couldn’t get out of here for two years.”
VAW Riders President Richard “Sly” Randall, 51, whose father served in the Vietnam War, explained that several other organizations had turned down Wood’s request for help building a ramp, mainly because getting a permit in the trailer park where he resides is a complicated process. Wood had become so jaded from being turned down so many times that he was skeptical when Randall and his team showed up.
“He was not too excited when we showed up,” Randall said. “I said, ‘Look, Chuck, we’re here. We’re not going nowhere. And if we say we’re going to build you a ramp, we’re going to build you a ramp.’”
Wood, who lost his leg to a blood clot, is not a member of any veterans organizations, and he’s frustrated by how little the government does to help disabled veterans, saying “they put too much money” into the wrong things.
VAW Riders went above and beyond to help Wood, setting him up in an electric wheelchair before building the ramp. They set up a GoFundMe page to gather donations for both the ramp and the process it would take to obtain the permit to make it in the trailer park.
After nearly a year of working on this, the ramp was finally finished on February 28.
“He was thrilled to death,” Randall said. “I made the joke to him that people are trying to keep people inside right now and [he’s] trying to get out of his house. … He was just thrilled to get out of the house, and for us, that’s it.”
“When he came out of the house that day — just the look on his face, smiling from ear to ear — that was all we needed,” he added.
Comments are closed.