Volunteers Help Repay a Disabled Veteran's Sacrifice

After an enemy bullet left Staff Sergeant Matt Keil paralyzed, an army of volunteers found a way to repay his sacrifice.

The Patriot Guard Riders provide motorcycle escorts at military funerals across America. This morning, however, two dozen bikers, mostly Vietnam veterans, assist at a different kind of ritual. A few miles south of Denver, they lead a line of cars up a dirt driveway toward a sprawling ranch house. In the newly landscaped yard, rows of folding chairs are filling with spectators, including many of the 400 volunteers who built the 2,500-square-foot home.

The guests of honor take their places by the front door. Matt Keil, 26, sits in an electric wheelchair; his wife, Tracy, 30, stands with her hand on his shoulder. Matt was an Army staff sergeant in Iraq, married six weeks, when a sniper's bullet left him a quadriplegic. But as he watches the flag-raising ceremony and listens to the speakers—a retired brigadier general, a congressman's aide-his face radiates joy. "Thank you to everyone who's had a hand in this," he says when it's his turn at the microphone. "You'll always be part of our family, no matter what."

Then a compact, bearded man steps forward. In the five years since he founded the nonprofit Homes for Our Troops, John Gonsalves has presided over more than 30 celebrations like this one.

"I want you to have the certificate of occupancy," he says, handing Tracy and Matt a document. The crowd cheers, and the door swings open to the couple's new life.

Matt Keil joined the Army after high school in Toledo, Ohio, primarily for the college money. He loved it so much that he stayed. After deployments to Kosovo and Korea, he volunteered for Iraq in 2004. "I didn't have a wife or kids," he says, "and I wanted to take a slot that might otherwise go to somebody who did."

He spent a year in Ramadi, a stronghold for Sunni insurgents, before being demobilized to Fort Carson, Colorado. One summer day, he met Tracy Wyatt by the pool; she was from Chicago and worked as an accountant for a defense contractor. As they chatted, they realized they had much in common: Both were Midwesterners raised in blue-collar families, ambitious, down-to-earth, and funny. And each thought the other was remarkably cute.

Soon they were sharing an apartment. At a going-away party before Matt's redeployment to Ramadi, he knelt and proposed to Tracy. They married in a small ceremony when he returned on leave in January 2007, then spent five days together before Matt went back to war.

On a predawn February morning, Matt was hanging camouflage netting on the roof of an abandoned house that his platoon had commandeered. From the streets below, he could hear the sounds of battle-the thud of AK-47 fire, the thunder of cannons from Bradley fighting vehicles. The darkness would protect him, he thought. Any insurgents who weren't shooting at tanks would surely be asleep.

But on a nearby rooftop, one enemy gunman was wide-awake.

Tracy answered the phone at 8 a.m. in Colorado. "He's been shot in the shoulder," the officer told her. She was, strangely, not surprised; she'd had a sense of foreboding the previous day, strong enough to keep her in tears and make her leave work early. Tracy and her mother got plane tickets and flew east, thinking a shoulder wound didn't sound so bad.

But when they arrived at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC, Matt was in the ICU, fully sedated and breathing with the help of a ventilator. A doctor spoke to Tracy the next day. "As you know," he began, "your husband is paralyzed from the neck down."

Tracy collapsed into her mother's arms. "You mean you didn't know?" the doctor asked. After apologizing, he explained that the bullet had entered through the right side of Matt's neck and exited through his left shoulder blade, damaging his spinal cord along the way.

Soon Matt's parents, siblings, and uncle arrived from Ohio. "Matt has an injury like Christopher Reeve's," the doctor told them. "He may be on a ventilator for the rest of his life. It's possible that he'll regain some limb function, but it's not likely."

Tracy latched onto the image of Reeve, who'd forged a new career as an advocate for people with spinal cord injuries. "I thought, Look what that guy did with his life," she recalls. Strengthening her optimism was the fact that her husband, a major Superman fan, had the Man of Steel's insignia tattooed on his right shoulder.

When Matt began to emerge from sedation, he went into what the doctors called ICU psychosis. Delirious and terrified, he snapped and spat at all who came near.

Once his mind cleared and he realized he was paralyzed, his practical nature kicked in. One of his first questions to Tracy was, "Do we have enough money?" She told him they did, with health insurance and income from her job. Veteran's benefits and Social Security payments would eventually arrive as well. They'd need a new apartment, but that wouldn't be hard—or so Tracy assumed.

After six weeks, Matt had gained limited use of his left arm and was stable enough to leave Walter Reed. He spent another six weeks at a trauma center in Tampa, Florida, and from there traveled with Tracy to Craig Hospital in Englewood, Colorado, one of the nation's top rehabilitation facilities. Within a month, he was off the ventilator and was learning how to handle what he called his new normal—everything from answering a phone to getting into a car. With a pencil or a fork strapped to his partially mobile left hand, he learned to push buttons and to feed himself.

Meanwhile, Tracy struggled to find an apartment for their life after rehab. Most places had hallways that were too narrow for a motorized wheelchair or kitchens that were obstacle courses. Retrofitting everything would be dauntingly complicated and expensive. "It was depressing," Matt recalls.

One day, Debbie Quackenbush, founder of American Military Family, Inc. (AMI)—a nonprofit that aids Colorado soldiers and their families—dropped off a gift of $1,000. When she asked if there was anything else the Keils needed, Tracy answered, "A place to live would be nice." Quackenbush promised to see what she could do. Then she placed a call to John Gonsalves.

More than 33,000 U.S. soldiers have been injured in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, about 3,000 so severely that they need permanent care. For those who have trouble navigating ordinary houses or apartments, it can cost $50,000 to $100,000 to retrofit a home or incorporate suitable features into a new one. The federal government gives grants of up to $60,000 for vets who own homes to create handicapped-accessible living quarters, but those who rent or move in with their parents receive a maximum reimbursement of $14,000.

John Gonsalves believes injured veterans deserve more substantial compensation. In 2003 he saw a TV news report about a soldier in Iraq who'd lost both legs to a rocket-propelled grenade. Gonsalves, then a 37-year-old construction supervisor in Taunton, Massachusetts, decided to volunteer his time to the group that would build the man a wheelchair-friendly home when he returned. After finding that no such organization existed, he started one.

Homes for Our Troops was the first nonprofit to construct houses for seriously disabled veterans. (A handful of other groups have since followed suit.) The organization relies largely on donated materials and labor, using its own funds to pay for land and other expenses. The homes are custom-designed to fit the needs of the veterans, who contribute any grant money they receive from the government but otherwise pay nothing and own the home outright. “It doesn't matter if you're for the war or not,” Gonsalves says. "These people put their lives on the line to preserve our freedom. We have to return the favor."

The Keils had no idea that Homes for Our Troops had them in mind until one night in August 2007. At a fund-raising dinner for AMI, Gonsalves called the couple to the stage and said, "We heard about you guys, and we want to build you a house." As slides of projects that he'd completed appeared on a screen, the audience erupted in cheers.

"We just about died of happiness then and there," Tracy recalls. The Keils left Craig Hospital a month later and moved into a ground-floor apartment in nearby Parker, the town where their house would be built. Tending to Matt's needs was a full-time job for Tracy (who by then had quit her accounting position), even with daily visits from home-health-care aides. Their landlord had remodeled the apartment's shower, but Matt couldn't even turn on the lights by himself.

Life in the new place would be different. Beyond being built with handicapped-accessible features like wider doorways, the house was designed to reduce Matt's dependence on Tracy and Tracy's dependence on outside help. The electrical system could be operated by voice commands, the doors by a keypad that Matt would carry with him. In the master bedroom, an electric lift would run along tracks on the ceiling, allowing Tracy to get him out of bed and into the bathroom.

A civilian army mobilized itself for the couple. A construction executive heard about them and committed his company to the project. Suppliers agreed to contribute materials. Contractors offered free services. Homes for Our Troops sent two "road warriors"—full-time volunteers who travel the country in RVs, camping at building sites-to oversee the workers. The first was Erik Freeman, 60, a retired construction supervisor and Vietnam vet whose wife had recently died. "I'm lucky to have this," he said when people asked him how he was holding up. "This is family."

The volunteer corps, which had expanded in size to include friends, neighbors, and strangers who wanted to help out, broke ground in April and finished the framing by July. By the end of summer, the Keils' dream had taken shape on five acres of rolling grassland.
"It's magnificent," Matt murmured one evening as the sunset cast a glow on the roof. He was too choked up to say more.

Speeches over, Matt and Tracy cross the threshold, followed by the road warriors, who lead guests on a tour of the house. They point out the elevator to the basement and the granite kitchen counters, built with an overhang so Matt can roll up for a meal. Friends bring in their housewarming gifts, including a glass-fronted box made by a buddy of Matt's who served with him in Iraq. It contains Matt's Purple Heart and combat ribbons. In the living room, Tracy gestures toward the big windows with a sweeping view of the Front Range mountains.
Soon most of the well-wishers leave, and family members begin unloading furniture and boxes from a moving truck. As Matt watches, he talks about the future.

"This is the house we're going to grow old in," he says quietly. "This is where we're going to raise a family." The couple plan to try in vitro fertilization, and if that doesn't work, they'll adopt a child with disabilities.