Amputee encourages students

WINSTON — Christian Bagge leaned against the bleachers Tuesday, out of sight, as Winston Middle School Principal Charan Cline introduced him.

Then Bagge walked across the gym floor on the prosthetic legs that extended from his shorts to his tennis shoes as more than 250 pairs of eyes watched. Some recognized him from pictures or newscasts they’d seen of him jogging with President George W. Bush last June.

“The most obvious thing about me is that I’m missing my legs,” said the former Eugene man, who now lives in Texas. “And it’s actually great that I can be here, and you guys can see somebody who’s got a severe disability that’s able to do what I do. I walk, run, swim. I can do anything I want to do, I just do it a little bit differently.”

It was Bagge’s message of perseverance that prompted Celebration of Literacy organizers to ask Bagge if he would give motivational talks at Douglas County middle schools this week. Bagge is now medically retired from the Army. He served as a staff sergeant in the Oregon National Guard and now works as a spokesman, along with actor Gary Sinise, for the American Veterans Disabled for Life Memorial Foundation, which is working to build a memorial for disabled veterans in Washington, D.C.

Bagge’s story begins at about 3 o’clock in the morning on June 3, 2005, south of Kirkuk, Iraq, when his platoon sergeant kicked open the door and told the soldiers to get ready.

They were headed for an area where the fighting was fierce.

“We were scared,” he said, “and as we came down the road there was a spot with just enormous holes in the ground, and these are from what we call IEDs, or improvised explosive devices. And they’re bombs that the insurgents dig under the road. They’ll put them under there, and you have no idea they’re watching you with a detonator and when you go over it, they set it off.”

As he and the other troops were coming back down the road, the first bomb went off, hitting his lieutenant’s vehicle.

“And immediately we knew that there was a possibility of what we call a secondary device, another bomb that the insurgents place close to the first one so when everybody comes to help, they can blow us all up,” he said. “And we’re scared, but we’re thinking about the lives of our friends.”

So Bagge pulled up to the other vehicle. As he opened his door, a second bomb blew beneath him.

The other soldiers tried to pull Bagge out of the vehicle, but his legs were pinned. When they freed him, he began to bleed. He lost almost half the blood in his body, but his friends saved him with by applying tourniquets.

When he woke up in a military hospital in Germany, he was temporarily blind.

“And then they told me, ‘Christian, we had to amputate your legs to save your life.’

“And there was so much fear ... and I thought, ‘What am I going to do now?’ Because I was born like every one of you, with two normal legs, a normal life, a normal family, and now everything that I knew was taken from me in an instant. And here I am at this turning point in my life.”

He went to rehabilitation twice a day, and one day he wanted to give up.

“I remember thinking, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t care because I’m still going to be disabled. I may walk, but I’m still going to look funny,’” he said.

Then he remembered a clock on the wall of his high school math room. It said “Persistence Equals Success.”

“And I learned that today’s persistence is tomorrow’s triumph,” he said.

He told the students that failing is just as important as winning.

“I failed so many times,” he said. “Like a little failure would be tripping in public. I’d have to go out in public and I was mortified. I didn’t want people to see me like this. People would stare. People would laugh when I fell. Some would help me up, others would just walk away. They didn’t know what to say, and that’s fine. But those little failures embarrassed me, they humbled me and they gave me the drive to succeed, to do better, to work harder, so that I can walk long, so that I can run with the president of the United States. That embarrassment made me who I am today.”

“Some of you are having a tough time,” Bagge said. “You may live in a rough family, but in order to succeed, in order to accomplish your goals, you have to put that behind you. If you want to, you can. It doesn’t matter what your disabilities are, like mine, or what things are holding you back. You have to conquer them and you have to make right decisions to be what you want to be and do what you want to do.”

David Culbertson and Austin Hunt, both seventh-graders, were impressed with how hard Bagge’s situation was.

“I thought it was really cool that he’s still alive,” said Brianna Robertson, another seventh-grader.

Mikel Rust, an eighth-grader, thought Bagge was courageous, and the talk reminded him of his uncles in the military.

“I thought it was great that he had enough courage to stand up in front of 300 middle school kids,” said James Clements IV, another eighth-grader. “Most people who have been through that don’t really talk about it.”



• You can reach reporter Teresa Williams at 957-4230 or via e-mail at twilliams@newsreview.info.

If you go ... <b>WHO:</b> Retired Army Staff Sgt. Christian Bagge <b>WHAT:</b> Speaking as part of Celebration of Literacy. The event is open to the public. <b>WHEN:</b> 7 p.m. today at the Roseburg High School library, 400 W. Harvard Ave. <b>Other Celebration of Literacy events to come include:</b> • Bilingual Spanish story time for preschoolers at 10:30 a.m. Thursday at the Douglas County Library, 1409 N.E. Diamond Lake Blvd., Roseburg. • Cultural Night at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Douglas County Library Ford Room, 1409 N.E. Diamond Lake Blvd., Roseburg. • Battle of the Books at 9 a.m. Saturday at the Roseburg High School Student Center, 400 W. Harvard Ave. <b>INFORMATION: </b>www.celebrationofliteracy.net