{"id":61210,"date":"2015-08-05T10:00:45","date_gmt":"2015-08-05T14:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=61210"},"modified":"2015-08-05T10:38:01","modified_gmt":"2015-08-05T14:38:01","slug":"timothy-spayd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=61210","title":{"rendered":"Timothy Spayd; Ranger School instructor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><center><a href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?attachment_id=61211\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-61211\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Timothy-Spayd-296x300.jpg\" alt=\"Timothy Spayd\" width=\"296\" height=\"300\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-61211\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Timothy-Spayd-296x300.jpg 296w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Timothy-Spayd-328x333.jpg 328w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Timothy-Spayd.jpg 658w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 296px) 100vw, 296px\" \/><\/a><\/center><\/p>\n<p>TSO sends us a link to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/checkpoint\/wp\/2015\/08\/05\/this-army-ranger-has-als-but-hes-still-teaching-soldiers-in-the-swamps-of-florida\/\">Washington Post<\/a> which tells the story of Ranger School instructor Sergeant Timothy Spayd, who happens to have amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, better known as ALS or Lou Gehrig\u2019s Disease.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Spayd is no typical instructor. A former active-duty sergeant, he was adopted two years ago by soldiers of the 6th Ranger Training Battalion, the unit that runs the third phase of Ranger School in the Florida Panhandle\u2019s swamps. <\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRangers is definitely a brotherhood that I\u2019ve tapped back into, and they\u2019ve given me a sense of purpose,\u201d Spayd said. \u201cI was literally sitting home dying. I was going downhill fast. I think mental toughness is a big deal. It\u2019s a big issue in life.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Good for the old buck sergeant. he&#8217;s right, though, if you just let the disease take over your life, you are doing nothing but dying<\/p>\n<p>ALS is quickly becoming a veterans&#8217; issue since it is twice as likely to affect veterans than the civilian population. It&#8217;s even more common among veterans who served in the Middle East for reasons that aren&#8217;t clear yet. The VA has made it a &#8220;presumptive service-connected disability&#8221; and despite what is making news, the VA has been very helpful in my case, at least.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>TSO sends us a link to the Washington Post which tells the story of Ranger School &hellip; <a title=\"Timothy Spayd; Ranger School instructor\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=61210\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Timothy Spayd; Ranger School instructor<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":61211,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-real-soldiers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61210","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=61210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/61211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}