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Five months ago, Iraq veteran Tom Davis felt abandoned by the country he loves.
The 32-year-old amputee, his wife, three kids and their 4-year-old boxer, Zeus, were living in his in-laws’ house, desperately searching for money to buy their own handicap-friendly home. When Veterans Affairs denied the family a grant, they realized there was no way they could afford to move into a house suited for Tom’s wheelchair.
But now, if a few patriotic citizens in Angola have their way, the Davis family will finally have the home of their dreams.
Companies, organizations and individuals from northeast Indiana have pledged more than $30,000 to help the Davis family build a five-bedroom home where Tom can turn circles under wide doorframes and roll quickly across wood floors. With that money, along with a $140,000 construction loan and a $50,000 VA grant, approved after appeal, the family recently broke ground on a 2-acre lot in Fremont.
Carol Mercer, who spearheads the community effort, calls the effort Angola’s version of "Extreme Makeover." But unlike the reality show, where people have their homes miraculously transformed, no one is sure how this episode will end. Jamie, Tom’s wife, thinks the couple needs $30,000 more to complete construction.
"At first I had a hard time getting on board with all of these people wanting to help," says Tom, who lost his left leg after a roadside bomb attack in 2006. "But I prayed about it a lot, and God said, ‘This is what you’re supposed to do.’ "
Davis, a Michigan native and graduate of Northwood University, enlisted in the Army in 2002 and deployed to Iraq in May 2003, two months after the U.S. invasion. He served 15 months, went back to his base in Germany and then deployed to Iraq again in November 2005.
After sitting in the Kuwait desert for six months, his unit went to Ramadi, about 70 miles west of Baghdad. On June 3, 2006, the first night his unit patrolled Ramadi’s streets on its own, Davis was in a three-vehicle convoy when he saw an Iraqi "spotter" sitting on top of a building. Fifteen minutes later, a roadside bomb exploded underneath the Humvee that Davis was riding in, directly under his left leg.
Davis’ gunner died instantly; the driver and a solider in the back seat walked away with scratches. Davis fractured two vertebrae, broke two arms, suffered a traumatic brain injury, fractured his left femur, broke his eye-socket bones and fractured his right knee.
"I woke up briefly in the Humvee, when they first pulled me out," says Tom, a tall, muscular man with a shaved head and a brown beard. "I remember feeling pain. But then I didn’t wake up until Germany."
Tom’s wife, Jamie, and the couple’s two children at the time came to stay with Tom during his recovery at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington where the family lived in a small hotel room.
Doctors said they could save Tom’s leg by fusing his bones together, but he’d need an extra year of physical therapy to walk again and he wouldn’t ever be able to bend his leg. After considering the effects of the operation and his constant pain, he decided to amputate.
"The doctors said, ‘Well, we might be able to do this,’ " Tom said. "But I thought, ‘It’s not worth it. I won’t be able to get down and play with the kids.’ "
Two or three days after the amputation, he was on the floor entertaining his children.
Davis wanted to stay in the Army, so he went back to active duty after his surgery, assuming an instructor position at Fort Benning, Ga. He worked there for a year – walking on his prosthesis – until he decided to go back to school through the Army’s Wounded Warrior program, which allowed him to pursue a master’s degree in information technology at the University of Kansas.
He enjoyed the program, but migraines and short-term memory loss caused by the explosion made it difficult to study. In November, he dropped out of the program and moved into Jamie’s family’s house in Angola.
By that time, Davis had three kids (Brenan, 7, Elli, 3, and Isaiah, 1), and another on the way. Shortly after his return, chronic back pain put him in a wheelchair, which made it hard for him to maneuver into bathrooms, bedrooms and other small doorways. But when the couple tried to find a house suited for their family, they came up empty-handed.
"We originally came back here to stay for a few months and then find a place to live," Davis says. "But we couldn’t find a single-story four-bedroom house in Angola that was under $300,000 or $400,000. We couldn’t find anything we could afford. And if we could have afforded it, we would have had to tear everything out to make it handicapped accessible."
Tom and Jamie tried to apply for the VA’s $50,000 Specially Adapted Housing Grant but were denied. They sent a letter describing their plight to Gov. Mitch Daniels, who then forwarded the letter to Charles T. Applegate, director of the Indiana VA.
In Applegate’s response letter, he thanked Davis for his service, told him he was not eligible for a housing grant, encouraged him to scale down his housing ambitions and questioned why he had chosen to live so far away from a VA Medical Center.
"I don’t believe the VA has forgotten about you," he wrote, "but sometimes you have to look for the things you need."
In the meantime, Jamie, frustrated with the situation, wrote a letter to a local newspaper explaining her situation.
Mercer, a retired secretary, had met Davis a year earlier at a fundraiser and was struck by his positive attitude and patriotism. When she saw the letter, she decided to take action.
"I think we should take care of our veterans," Mercer says. "(Tom) is just one of the sweetest people you ever want to meet, and he loves his country more than anything else in the world besides his family. My intention was to get the whole community, which was so depressed anyhow, involved and prepared for the rescue."
Mercer, along with Jamie’s parents, started encouraging northern Indiana residents to donate money, labor or supplies toward a house for the Davises. Mercer and others volunteered to prime and paint the interior of the home; others volunteered to install insulation, wire the house and build a well.
As of early June, Auburn’s Home Depot, Fremont’s Bradley Overhead Door, the Disabled American Veterans of Fort Wayne and more than 15 other businesses and people had offered money and labor for the cause. The couple got more good news when the VA grant finally came through.
"I’m really excited to get going and get a house that I can really get around in," says Tom, who hopes to work again as soon as he gets out of his wheelchair. "I’ll be able to get to the bathroom. I can turn around in doorways. I can quickly get to my kids.
"I do feel comfortable that we can build this house now, but it will still take some work and a lot of prayer and probably a little luck too."
While Tom has faith he’ll be able to build his house, Mercer isn’t so sure.
"They have money to start building it, but they don’t have enough to finish it," she says. "They have no furniture, no appliances. They’ve got to get a place of their own. Their (current) house is little; there’s no room for the kids to really play.
"Tom once said, ‘If I could get a house, I could get my life back.’ He and Jamie, they never had a chance to even start."
