Cycling Trek Brings Hope, Inspiration to Thousands

By Joe Sapere

As spring turns to summer, every year for the past five years, three ordinary middle-aged people get on a bicycle and ride across the United States, visiting patients in over 26 rehabilitation hospitals and bringing hope and inspiration to thousands of people facing a physical challenge.

These are the riders for Amputees Across America, a cycling outreach program spanning the North American continent. As all three riders are missing a leg, this is remarkable in itself, but what makes this 58-day, 3,500-mile journey truly extraordinary is that two of these bicyclists have not ridden a bicycle in 15 years. Stopping predominantly in HealthSouth rehabilitation hospitals along the way, this Amputee Coalition of America (ACA)-trained peer counseling team visits patients recovering from physical challenges. Through motivational talks and individual peer visits, they touch the lives of thousands of patients, giving hope and inspiration to enable those patients to return to an active and meaningful life.

Organized as an annual event, Amputees Across America has as this year's riders Amber Johnson, Gary Summers, and Joe Sapere. The team comprises two men and one woman, with two of the riders being transtibial amputees and one a transfemoral amputee. One rider is young at 29 years, one is middle-aged at 52, and one is age 65. As diverse as these riders are, they share one common thread that drives themand that is an obsession to make a difference in the lives of those overcoming physical challenges.

As the trio rides out from the HealthSouth Rehabilitation Hospital of Tustin, California on June 5, with every turn of the wheel and stroke of the pedal, the mantra will be repeated again and again, "Don't give up." This message will be carried on the wings of these riders and repeated 28 times in HealthSouth rehabilitation hospitals from the shores of the Pacific to the beaches of Vero Beach, Florida, as the team arrives there on July 31.

The HealthSouth Corporation and its nationwide network of rehabilitation hospitals is the main sponsor of Amputees Across America and provides the venue, logistics, and financial support that make this ride possible. Financial sponsorship and Pathfinder® feet and Alpha ® liners are provided by Ohio Willow Wood, Mt. Sterling, Ohio. AAA is an activity of the Alabama Association of the Physically Challenged and enjoys support of the Alabama Artificial Limb and Orthopedic Services of Montgomery, Alabama.

About the Riders Amber "AJ" Johnson, 29, is a below-knee amputee as of June 3, 2003. AJ lost her leg following a nine-year year battle to save her left ankle after a car wreck crushed both ankles at age 17. At her high school graduation, her only goal was to walk to get her diploma. She did. As her ankle became more and more painful, she was able to do less and less. The goal of becoming an architect vanished. The goal of being a normal, young adult never happened.

What did happen, though, was AJ finally became tired of living lifesitting down. She decided that crawling and wheeling around weren't for her. She decided that she was tired of weighing 280 lb. and watching her behind grow larger every day that she couldn't walk. So she decided to ask a doctor she'd never met to remove her foot and ankle via an Ertl-type amputation.

Now, AJ has lots of goals that have been reached with some good old-fashioned training. Even though she spends lots of time teaching in her second-grade classroom, she enjoys running, biking, and playing softball. She's been known to enter a race or two and thrives on good competition. AJ is a single mom to two wild West Highland White Terriers and loves just waking up every morning! She hopes that her message of being "differently-abled, not disabled" is one that people of various ability levels will remember.

Gary Summers, 52, is a left leg above-knee amputee. A lifetime, resident who grew up in the farming community of Mt. Sterling, Ohio, Gary farmed with his father for 31 years and has worked for John Deere Company the last 21 years. Gary and his wifeTrudy have a daughter Lori, a son-in-law Rich, and son Troy as well as two step-granddaughters and a grandson.

On April 26, 2003, Gary was riding his motorcycle on a backcountry highway when another motorcycle came at him on a curve on the wrong side of the road, striking him head-on. After two weeks of trying to save his leg, it had to be amputated. Four days after Gary came home from the hospital, Raymond Francis, CP, chief of Prosthetic Services, Ohio Willow Wood, met with him and began the process of fitting him with a new leg. After three months of convalescence and working to regain his health and ability to walk again, Gary went back to work at John Deere.

His aim for riding in the Amputees Across America Bicycle trip is to help others to regain the determination it takes to live a fulfilling lifeand not stay on the sidelines waiting. Besides a little bicycling will do the body some good, he says!

Joe Sapere is a retired Air Force colonel and a recent below-the-knee amputee due to a mid-air collision with another skydiver in February 2000.

Born in Yonkers, New York, Joe attended college at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, and entered the US Air Force in 1963. He then spent the next 26 years flying electronic countermeasures and fighter aircraft. Obtaining a masters degree in education in 1972 from the University of Southern California, Joe retired from the Air Force in 1989 and began a second career in elementary school teaching. He then taught fourth grade in the Virginia Beach, Virginia, public schools for the next nine years. He retired a second time in 1998, sold his house, and traveled the countryside for the next five years in a 35- ft. fifth wheel.

An avid bicyclist, Joe spends every day riding, weather permitting. After ten months of rehab, he returned to the sport of skydiving on December 24, 2000, and has been active ever since.

Joe's goal in lifeis to demonstrate to other amputees that lifegets better despite amputation. In 2002, Joe founded Amputees Across America, and in partnership with HealthSouth Corporation and Ohio Willow Wood, is joined each year by other amputees to make a coast-to-coast skydiving and bicycle trip, visiting amputees and other rehab patients in rehabilitation hospitals along the way. Along with Joe's efforts and the efforts of many behind-the-scenes supporters and guest riders, millions have been inspired to regain the lives that they had before the onset of their physical disability.

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