This is just a few paragraphs about the Vet. Google it to read in it's entirety.
"Dog Teaches Vietnam Veteran to Love Again"
Bob Calderon, a double amputee, was long the picture of resilience. But when the going got tough even for him, Southeastern Guide Dogs stepped in.
Jan. 14, 2018, at 3:01 a.m.
By BILLY COX, Sarasota Herald-Tribune
BRADENTON, Fla. (AP) — On the bright afternoon of Feb. 4, 1970, a land mine tore apart a South Vietnamese soldier who stood maybe 10 feet away from Pfc. Bob Calderon, as the two were returning to a rural village from a joint patrol. The spray of shrapnel knocked the 19-year-old Marine off his feet and forced surgeons to amputate his mangled legs above the knee. For the next several months, he was totally blind.
Calderon would regain vision in his right eye, then reassemble what was left into a portrait of resilience. He would graduate from a wheelchair into prosthetic limbs. He went to school on the G.I. bill, learned a trade and entered the workforce as a mechanical draftsman. He learned to play through the pain of embedded metal fragments so numerous he can't take an MRI scan. He became a competitive wheelchair bowler, played wheelchair hoops, and traveled as far away as New Zealand to become the USA World 9-Ball Champion in a billiards tournament.
"Dog Teaches Vietnam Veteran to Love Again"
Bob Calderon, a double amputee, was long the picture of resilience. But when the going got tough even for him, Southeastern Guide Dogs stepped in.
Jan. 14, 2018, at 3:01 a.m.
By BILLY COX, Sarasota Herald-Tribune
BRADENTON, Fla. (AP) — On the bright afternoon of Feb. 4, 1970, a land mine tore apart a South Vietnamese soldier who stood maybe 10 feet away from Pfc. Bob Calderon, as the two were returning to a rural village from a joint patrol. The spray of shrapnel knocked the 19-year-old Marine off his feet and forced surgeons to amputate his mangled legs above the knee. For the next several months, he was totally blind.
Calderon would regain vision in his right eye, then reassemble what was left into a portrait of resilience. He would graduate from a wheelchair into prosthetic limbs. He went to school on the G.I. bill, learned a trade and entered the workforce as a mechanical draftsman. He learned to play through the pain of embedded metal fragments so numerous he can't take an MRI scan. He became a competitive wheelchair bowler, played wheelchair hoops, and traveled as far away as New Zealand to become the USA World 9-Ball Champion in a billiards tournament.
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