Dave Evans lost both legs just below the knees in Vietnam. For 34 years now, he has committed and risked his life to help people like him all over the world.
Dave Evans lost both legs just below the knees in Vietnam. For 34 years now, he has committed and risked his life to help people like him all over the world.
Next week, Evans heads to Iraq to help upgrade prosthetic clinics and train Iraqis to replace arms, legs and feet for amputees.
"I don't care what side you are on. I don't care what politics you have," Evans said last week. "I will take care of you if you are an amputee."
The U.S. State Department is financing his work and also will pick up costs to train Iraqis to help the wounded.
Evans plans to spend two weeks in Ibel and Kurkuk, towns southeast of Mosul and north of Baghdad.
"The mission of my trip is to look at their rehabilitation centers, and maybe a third center in another town, and to evaluate them," Evans said.
"When I come back, I will order appropriate equipment and work to make repairs. A lot of clinics and medical centers in northern Iraq were destroyed in the war with Iran between 1979 and 1989 and after the [Persian] Gulf War," Evans said.
"We will be looking to help people upgrade their skills, teaching them new limb-socket designs and how to use components to make limbs."
In the near future, teams of four Iraqis each will visit the United States for four to five months of training.
"We will probably train more than one team," Evans said. "The State Department likes the idea of doing it at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C.
"We will be going back to Iraq at least twice a year for the next three years until we finish this project.
"Next year, we will begin teaching local people to build wheelchairs from scratch, how to bend metal, how to put on wheels," Evans said.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., sponsored legislation to help war victims in Iraq, believing the U.S. was not doing enough to help innocent victims of battles, IEDs (improvised explosive devices) and misdirected gunfire.
"We have a moral responsibility," Leahy said. "It is in our own self-interest to try to help innocent civilians who have suffered grievous losses as a result of our actions."
A recent New York Times article pointed out, "In the United States, the issue of war injuries has revolved almost entirely around the care received by the 30,000 wounded American veterans.
"But Iraqi soldiers and police officers have been wounded in greater numbers, health workers say, and have been treated far worse by their government."
From Vietnam to Iraq
It was his mother's birthday - Dec. 4, 1970.
Evans was leading a U.S. Marine patrol outside a firebase in Quan Tri Province in the South Vietnamese highlands.
He dropped to the ground after small-arms fire and shrapnel from a rocket-propelled grenade hit him. The injury led to the loss of both his legs.
Born in Charleston in May 1952, Evans grew up in Kanawha County and went to East Bank High School.
When Evans returned home from Vietnam in June 1971, he began questioning the wisdom of the Vietnam War.
In 1974, he began working to replace legs and arms for fellow Vietnam veterans at a private clinic on Elizabeth Street on Charleston's East End. Most of his work there involved helping victims of industrial accidents, car wrecks and medical disorders.
Evans soon began returning to Vietnam and Cambodia to help people still suffering from wounds in that long war. Evans ended up spending two and a half years in those countries.
He works in Southeast Asia and around the world to train local people and help them set up prosthetic clinics of their own.
Dave Evans lost both legs just below the knees in Vietnam. For 34 years now, he has committed and risked his life to help people like him all over the world.
Next week, Evans heads to Iraq to help upgrade prosthetic clinics and train Iraqis to replace arms, legs and feet for amputees.
"I don't care what side you are on. I don't care what politics you have," Evans said last week. "I will take care of you if you are an amputee."
The U.S. State Department is financing his work and also will pick up costs to train Iraqis to help the wounded.
Evans plans to spend two weeks in Ibel and Kurkuk, towns southeast of Mosul and north of Baghdad.
"The mission of my trip is to look at their rehabilitation centers, and maybe a third center in another town, and to evaluate them," Evans said.
"When I come back, I will order appropriate equipment and work to make repairs. A lot of clinics and medical centers in northern Iraq were destroyed in the war with Iran between 1979 and 1989 and after the [Persian] Gulf War," Evans said.
"We will be looking to help people upgrade their skills, teaching them new limb-socket designs and how to use components to make limbs."
In the near future, teams of four Iraqis each will visit the United States for four to five months of training.
"We will probably train more than one team," Evans said. "The State Department likes the idea of doing it at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C.
"We will be going back to Iraq at least twice a year for the next three years until we finish this project.
"Next year, we will begin teaching local people to build wheelchairs from scratch, how to bend metal, how to put on wheels," Evans said.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., sponsored legislation to help war victims in Iraq, believing the U.S. was not doing enough to help innocent victims of battles, IEDs (improvised explosive devices) and misdirected gunfire.
"We have a moral responsibility," Leahy said. "It is in our own self-interest to try to help innocent civilians who have suffered grievous losses as a result of our actions."
A recent New York Times article pointed out, "In the United States, the issue of war injuries has revolved almost entirely around the care received by the 30,000 wounded American veterans.
"But Iraqi soldiers and police officers have been wounded in greater numbers, health workers say, and have been treated far worse by their government."
From Vietnam to Iraq
It was his mother's birthday - Dec. 4, 1970.
Evans was leading a U.S. Marine patrol outside a firebase in Quan Tri Province in the South Vietnamese highlands.
He dropped to the ground after small-arms fire and shrapnel from a rocket-propelled grenade hit him. The injury led to the loss of both his legs.
Born in Charleston in May 1952, Evans grew up in Kanawha County and went to East Bank High School.
When Evans returned home from Vietnam in June 1971, he began questioning the wisdom of the Vietnam War.
In 1974, he began working to replace legs and arms for fellow Vietnam veterans at a private clinic on Elizabeth Street on Charleston's East End. Most of his work there involved helping victims of industrial accidents, car wrecks and medical disorders.
Evans soon began returning to Vietnam and Cambodia to help people still suffering from wounds in that long war. Evans ended up spending two and a half years in those countries.
He works in Southeast Asia and around the world to train local people and help them set up prosthetic clinics of their own.
In 1989 and 1990, he worked with a team from UCLA to heal soldiers wounded in the former Soviet Union's war in Afghanistan.
Between 1999 and 2001, Evans came down with malaria four times while he worked in western Africa.
The State Department helped fund his work creating clinics in Sierra Leone, a project Evans discussed with then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
Evans has replaced arms and legs for war victims in Angola, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Cuba, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Colombia and Peru.
"There are too many damn wars," he said.
War victims become friends
"When you are wounded, you want to work with others who are wounded. That's why I went back to Vietnam," Evans said.
Wounded combatants from both sides in civil conflicts become friends, said Evans, who now lives in Antigua, Guatemala.
"In Nicaragua, ex-Contras are working well with ex-Sandinistas. In El Salvador, ex-guerillas work with ex-military soldiers.
"You all get up in the morning, put your legs on, then go to work," Evans said.
Today, Evans also does a lot of work in Peru and Colombia, countries torn by civil conflicts where both sides use land mines.
"There are more injuries from land mines in Colombia today than there were in Cambodia. The FARC [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia] rebels put land mines in coffee-growing areas to hurt the economy. A lot of coffee workers become victims."
The future
Evans hopes his work in Iraq helps lead to a more peaceful future.
"Our country will have to build bridges with a lot of people we have alienated over the past seven years," he said.
For years, Evans worked with Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation. With new veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq, the group changed its name to Veterans for America. (www.veteransforamerica.org.)
Information Management & Mine Action Programs, or IMMAP, is also supporting his work in Iraq. Today, Evans is a member of Veterans for Obama.
"I was reluctant to do this at first," Evans said. "I didn't want anyone to think I supported the war. But this war will be winding down."
Back on May 6, 2000, West Virginia University Institute of Technology awarded Evans an honorary doctorate for his career helping war victims.
Evans traveled back to Montgomery, taking a break from creating clinics in Sierra Leone and training local health workers to replace children's hands and arms. Most were intentionally mutilated during a bitter civil war for control over gold and diamond mines.
A few weeks ago, Evans said, he choked with emotion when he met a bilateral amputee being treated at Walter Reed for injuries in Iraq.
"Almost 40 years ago, I was in the same place. We really let this generation down. We did not do enough to stop Bush and stop this war. This kid should not be in this wheelchair.
"Senator Robert C. Byrd has said you cannot fight a war against a popular insurgency. But we are doing it again."
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Posted By: dolphingirl22(2:00pm 07-06-2008)
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I was so happy to read about Dave Evans work in the rehabilitation of those who suffered similar losses to his own. I had the pleasure of meeting Dave right before he started on his career in prosthetics. I applaud his spirit and efforts to help others and concur with his belief that there are too many wars. Keep up the good work Dave!
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