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Friday, September 16, 2005
His one-man mission gives disabled Iraqis normalcy
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Al Radwaniyah, Iraq � The gift from Staff Sgt. Joe Neely was nothing extravagant. Yet for the family of Hussein Ali Tamer, the gesture was life-changing.
The gift was a shiny new wheelchair purchased with Neely’s money by his interpreter in Baghdad.
It means Tamer’s disabled mother, Sabiha Mahawez, will not have to sit all day on a dusty mattress laid out on the small veranda attached to his sparsely furnished house. It means that his daughter, Iman, 12, will no longer have to stay home to take care of her grandmother â€â€? she can go back to school.
Louie Favorite/AJC
Staff Sgt. Joe Neely provided crutches for Hussein Ahmed, 10. MORE PHOTOS
Mahawez said she is 60 years old, but the deep wrinkles that intersect the faded indigo tattoo marks on her face suggest she has lived longer. She has not been able to walk since unsuccessful surgery for a leg condition 18 months ago.
“With your permission, we’d like to present your mother with this wheelchair,” the soft-spoken Neely told Tamer, a farmer who ekes out a living from a few small crops.
Soldiers of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team frequently interact with residents of the southwest Baghdad area on official civil affairs missions. They hand out school supplies, tend to medical needs, or help with the rebuilding of infrastructure.
Acts of goodwill are one way for the soldiers to build relationships with Iraqis, who might in return divulge information about anti-American activity.
In comparison, Neely’s project was small â€â€? a private one-man mission â€â€? and the goal simple: to give three human beings a chance at a little bit of normalcy.
Neely, a self-employed insurance salesman from Lawrenceville, noticed Mahawez on one of his outings to this village, where soldiers of Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment, patrol. He also noticed there were several disabled children in nearby villages who needed wheelchairs.
With money from his own pocket, he purchased wheelchairs for Mahawez and two of the children.
In this area just south of Abu Ghraib and west of Baghdad International Airport, subsistence farmers struggle to survive as their ancestors did hundreds of years ago. Life is uncomplicated, but hard, for poor villagers without access to the basics of life, such as clean water and electricity.
The children swarm American soldiers, begging for their pens, sunglasses, watches and bottles of cold drinking water.
As an infantryman, Neely has seen the worst of Iraq. In the first week after his arrival here, Neely saw a suicide bombing, three dead bodies and the remains of a fourth.
But in these rustic hamlets, where some villagers sleep with AK-47 rifles beside their pillow, Neely let compassion do the talking.
Neely contacted his ex-wife, Sara Kleese, who works at a nursing home in Lawrenceville, to see if her company would donate the wheelchairs. Life Care Center was willing to donate the chairs, but the shipping cost � $500 each � was prohibitive, Kleese said.
Soldiers’ Angels, a support organization for deployed troops, offered a $250 gift certificate at Amazon.com. But that too proved futile, said Neely, because Amazon was not willing to ship wheelchairs to a military address in Iraq.
Neely finally found help through an Alpha Company interpreter who goes only by his nickname, Imad, to shield his identity. Imad returned from a trip to central Baghdad with three shiny chairs that cost a total $290.
“I don’t really care about having to pay anything out of my pocket,” Neely said. “I just wanted to make a difference in [Iraqi] lives.”
This week, Neely eyed a Sony PlayStation 2 at the PX but walked away from it. Instead, he gave Imad another $250 to buy medication for local villagers to treat ailments such as headaches, high blood pressure, diarrhea and diabetes.
Even if they are able to see a doctor, Al Radwaniyah residents have to travel to Abu Ghraib for medicine because there aren’t pharmacies in their villages.
“I can’t give you a grand reason why I did it,” Neely said. “I just wanted to. I look at the people in these villages, and all they have are the shirts on their back.”
Kleese said giving had always been part of Neely’s nature.
“He gives at church. He’s always been a generous person,” she said.
Neely was an Eagle Scout as a youngster and is still active in the Scout troop his son, Joey, 15, belongs to. When he is out among Iraqi children, Neely said, he often thinks of Joey and his two daughters, Lauren, 13, and Madeline, 10.
“My kids get to do a lot of stuff these kids will never get to do,” he said.
In a hamlet known as Hamza Sadoun, Salim Fadil, 13, beamed in his new wheelchair. The boy, born with legs twisted in an unnatural position, had been using a rickety old chair on the verge of falling apart.
“I hope he really enjoys it,” Neely told the interpreter to relay to Salim.
“Inshallah [God willing],” Salim said. “Inshallah.”
A third wheelchair was bought for Hussein Ahmed, 10. The Georgia soldiers found him sitting barefoot on the filthy roadside a few yards off the main highway. His parents, Karim and Hebba, began treatments for the boy’s legs when he was 9 months old. When Hussein turned 3, his parents abandoned hope.
Hussein already had a wheelchair he had outgrown. Neely was ready to hand over a new chair when the soldiers noticed that the boy could actually stand holding onto the armrests. They decided it would be best if Neely bought Hussein a pair of crutches so he could learn to walk.
Imad said Neely had been instrumental in his own efforts to help Iraqis.
“We are both Roman Catholic, so we have a bond there,” Neely said. “We believe if you do something good it will come back tenfold. I know it’s not going to fix everything here, but it’s going to impact the lives of those people.”
The day after she received her new wheelchair, Mahawez, the disabled woman, was no longer watching day turn to night from her worn spot on the veranda floor.
She had wheeled herself out to the yard, to a shady spot under a date palm from which she could watch her grandchildren playing.
Staff writer Dave Hirschman contributed to this article.
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