Dear Wounded Warriors Family Support,
This photo is my entire family, all 7 of us, going down Splash Mountain at Disney World. My family and I want to thank you for sending us to Disney World, we had an amazing time. I wish I could express in words how much this trip meant to our family. It wasn’t just Disney World itself that was so incredible, but our accommodations at Bahama Bay were a first class resort. Vacationing with our 5 children usually means we are crammed into a one or two room motel, but Bahama Bay was a home away from home, a very nice home away from home. We had all the amenities including 3 bedrooms, a fully furnished kitchen, patio, washer/dryer everything we needed. My family and I have never vacationed in a place as nice as The Bahama Bay Resort. In fact we decided to take a day off from Disney World and spent the entire day at Bahama Bay fishing, swimming, walking along the lake on the concrete nature trails and playing football with our kids in the huge open spaces surrounding our condominium.
At Disney World, we were treated as VIPs being able to go to the front of almost every line and usually had our choice to ride it twice in a row, which we usually did. The waiting time for the popular rides was an hour or more. In the same amount of time a person had to wait for one ride, we were able to ride four different rides. I’ve been to a theme park since I’ve been paralyzed and had a very difficult time because it was very hard to transfer on to most of the rides, especially the roller coasters. At Disney World, all the rides were wheelchair accessible. On some of the rides, you didn’t have to get out of your wheelchair because they had special cars, boats, etc that allowed you to roll your wheelchair onto the ride and they secured the wheelchair in place, it was so convenient and easy. Even the roller coasters were accessible. The roller coasters had a designated car that had a door that would swing open that allowed me to make an easy transfer from my wheelchair into the seat.
While I was in our condo at Bahama Bay, I read the plaque on the wall about Petty Officer 3rd Class Jeffery L. Wiener, a Navy corpsman who was killed in Iraq and it drew me to realize something very important and wonderful about your organization. There are several great organizations that provide services to combat disabled veterans, but there’s one major thing that the Wounded Warriors Family Support provides that other organization don’t. And that is your focus on the entire family and not just the wounded veterans. It’s obvious that disabled veterans go through tremendous hardships when their injuries are severe and permanent. I went from parachuting out of airplanes to doing wheelies in a wheelchair after I broke my back during a counter narcotics mission in South America. My injuries caused permanently paralysis from the waist down. But many don’t realize how much the families of the disabled veterans suffer and what they go through. They suffer just as much as us, but obviously in different ways when their husband, wife, dad, mom, son or daughter is severely injured. Our families are the most important part of our rehabilitation. It’s our families who give us the strength to get through the hard times, to move forward when we don’t have the strength. This trip to Disney World was like a way for us, the veterans, to say, “thank you” to our spouses, our kids who have gone through the tough times with us, who have stayed by our side through the many days or months in the hospital, who stays positive and keeps smiling even though they are suffering on the inside with us.
It means so much that you are not only so appreciative of us, the men and women who were injured while fighting for our country and for our freedoms, but that you appreciate and support our families too and especially those whose spouses were killed in action. I read the thank you letters from the wife of Petty Officer 3rd Class Jeffery L. Wiener and the wife of Sergeant First Class Allen C. Johnson and how you fulfilled the promises and dreams made by their husband by taking their families to Disney World. I know it meant so much to them just as this trip meant so much to us. It’s you and your organization that makes me proud that my injuries and service wasn’t in vain, but that they are greatly appreciated and not taken for granted.
Sincerely,
The Morgan Family, Will, Grant, Austin, Blake, Paiton, Christina and Jason
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