The Best Patriotic Act...

Is pursuing and pressing on for your family and country even when you are paralyzed... literally.

It was the Fourth of July in Baghdad, a day off for Army Sgt. James Lathan Jr.
The Omaha soldier had six hours to kill before the online chat scheduled with his wife. Their excitement was building about his return from Iraq -- already once delayed, but now, finally, only eight days away.

Bored, the helicopter mechanic and another soldier from his unit headed to the recreation tent for a movie.

The mortar round that would forever change Lathan's life was the only one the insurgents fired into camp that day. The haphazardly fired projectiles usually never hit much of anything.
This one pounded into the earth directly behind Lathan, the blast sending him sprawling.
In the foggy aftermath, Lathan remembers the other soldier screaming for help. Lathan tried to call, too, but his voice was mute. He felt nothing, a strange weightlessness gripping his entire body.

"I just knew I couldn't breathe or move,'' Lathan would say later from his bed in a Boston veterans hospital.”You just don't think at the time that you've been injured so bad, so bad that it can't ever be fixed.''

Lathan's is a face on a statistic that doesn't get much attention -- American soldiers wounded in the Iraq war.

As he was urgently shuttled to military hospitals in Baghdad, Germany and Washington, D.C., in the days after the mortar attack, Lathan would learn the harsh realities.

The shrapnel that struck him at the base of the skull had left him paralyzed from the neck down.
He almost surely would never walk again. Might never breathe on his own again. Probably never wrap his arms around his wife or 4-year-old son again.

Today, the former Central High ROTC cadet is spending his 27th birthday in the Boston VA hospital, a place where he's coming to terms with the paralysis that grips his young, wiry body. He calls it "learning to live with what I've got.''

Almost every day there are small victories and firsts. Relearning how to swallow. A tinge of feeling in his right arm. But doctors are careful not to encourage false hopes.

Lathan's father, James Sr., even as he prepares to send another son, 18-year-old Jonathan, to Iraq, thinks the U.S. soldiers are making a difference.

For his part, Lathan pays little attention to the nation's debate and has accepted his lot with the cool head and brave face of a soldier. He expresses no regrets over his service in Iraq or the extreme price he paid. "Would it help to sit around and pity myself all day?'' he said over the ever-present hum of a bedside respirator.”What else can you do but go on?''

James Lathan Jr. was born in a military hospital in Germany, but he really wasn't a born soldier.
He joined the Army, following in the booted footsteps of his father, because he said he didn't have any better prospects coming out of high school.

But Lathan came to enjoy the rigor and regimen of Army life.
At his first duty stop he met his wife, Amy, a soldier's daughter who has never known life off a military base.

His Army job, fixing hydraulic systems on Apache helicopters, was a natural. As a kid he had been fascinated by how things worked, once taking apart his new birthday watch to see what made the hands go around.

He and Amy saw the world, became parents of James III, and were able to save some money. Lathan's ultimate dream was to return to Omaha and start his own business.

In April 2003, he first set foot on the sands of Iraq.

"I'm a soldier,'' he would later say of what became a tragic delay.”I go where I've got to go and do what I've got to do.''

All Lathan remembers of the first days after the mortar attack was the helicopter ride that began his arduous journey toward recovery.

Days later he was flown by plane to a military hospital in Germany, near his former duty station, where there was a heartbreaking reunion with his family. At first, Lathan's son wouldn't touch his dad, afraid he might hurt him more.

Then Amy was told she had just hours to pack. She and "Little James" would be flying with him to the Army's Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

The long plane ride to the States gave Amy her first sobering picture of the devastating toll on U.S. soldiers. Gurneys of gravely injured soldiers were bunked three high and two wide, extending about 10 rows from front to back.
At one point Little James called out, "I want my Daddy,'' and the eyes of soldiers lying nearby glistened with tears.

The focus at Walter Reed was on stabilizing Lathan. Nothing was severed or broken, but the swelling and bruising around his spinal cord made the prognosis uncertain. He and Amy learned to communicate. First she pointed to letters on a board and he blinked to indicate when she hit the right one. She later learned to read his lips.
"G-O-O-D G-R-I-E-F,'' he once spelled when she was gone too long. "I M-I-S-S-E-D Y-O-U.''
Once when Amy asked him whether he wanted her to turn on the TV, he mouthed, "I'll just look at you.''

He had a proud moment when a general came to his bedside and pinned a Purple Heart medal to his blue hospital gown.

But he also often expressed helplessness, at one point telling his wife he felt like a baby.
"Honey, it's just the beginning,'' she said.”You'll get better.''

In Boston last week, Lathan sat in a wheelchair and sipped a vanilla milkshake through a straw. It was the first time he had been out of bed in two months, another small step in his new life.
The move to Boston late in August began the rehabilitation phase of recovery. It's where he'll learn the full potential of his future.

After Amy walked into the room and heard her husband answering "Yes'' to a therapist's question, she burst into tears.”What's wrong?'' Lathan asked, the first spoken words to his wife since the attack.

Then last Tuesday, two nurses for the first time lifted him out of bed into a wheelchair. For now, he's learning to sit. Eventually, he'll learn to work the mouthoperated controls, helping him negotiate the turns his life takes from here.

The focus in Boston is not only on recovering soldiers' bodies but also their minds.

Full of youthful bravado, some have trouble coping with the thought of life in a wheelchair, said Sigmund Hough, neuropsychologist with the VA. Lathan appears to be one of those with the inner strength to get through.

"He's really pulled things together for his family,'' Hough said.

Lathan's family has pulled together for him as well.
Amy reads to him by his bedside. She talks to him and strokes his hand, even knowing he cannot feel her touch. Little James clowns around with a towel on his head, greets each of the many doctors and nurses who come calling and climbs in bed with his dad. His artwork on the walls and mere presence brighten an otherwise dreary place.

Spending the rest of his life with his son is part of what gives Lathan the strength to face each day. "Things happen, you know. It's not a perfect world,'' he said. "I'm lucky. I'll get to see my kid grow up.''

-You go soldier! Now that is patriotic; God bless him.

Jennifer