\u201cI\u2019ve never been to a military hospital and one day I went to have lunch with my wife at Walter Reed and as soon as you walk in, you see some pretty heavy stuff and I really wasn\u2019t prepared for that and it hit me hard. I knew right at that moment that I had to get involved but I really didn\u2019t know what attributes I had to offer these guys,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Thompson, who served in the Army National Guard from 1985 to 1992, said he \u201cneeded some direction and discipline.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I moved to Colorado and enlisted in the Army National Guard. The military gave me what I needed as a young man,\u201d said Thompson, who lost his father at the age of 13.<\/p>\n
Thompson was never deployed \u2014 and seeing the young men and women at Walter Reed was a real \u201cgut check\u201d for him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was lucky and they weren\u2019t so lucky,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
After his visit to the medical center, he went to the American Red Cross office at the hospital and asked to be a volunteer. He was placed in the aquatics department and started helping wounded soldiers.<\/p>\n
It was there that Thompson realized he could help even more these soldiers with their rehabilitation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
You should click over and read the rest of the story. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ABC News sends us their latest in their Standing Up for Heroes series. This one is … John W. Thompson; Diving Program Helps Wounded Soldiers with Rehab<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42971,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-support-the-troops"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/42971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"HT_rehab_diving_3_mar_140409_16x9_608\"](\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/HT_rehab_diving_3_mar_140409_16x9_608-300x168.jpg\")
<\/a><\/center><\/p>\n