Nonprofit group renovates disabled veteran’s Las Vegas home
When Ed Wiesing first saw his newly renovated bathroom sink, he was happy to wheel right in front of it and not have to maneuver his wheelchair at an angle.
“I got to spit in my own sink!” the 51-year-old veteran told his wife after their Las Vegas home was finished with renovations from a project orchestrated by the nonprofit Guns to Hammers, which helps make the homes of disabled veterans compliant with the Americans With Disabilities Act.
Now that the project is finished, he can also wash himself with a large, widened shower.
“What Guns to Hammers does is just absolutely priceless,” Wiesing said Friday. “It frees up a lot of time for my wife to allow her to not watch me 24 hours a day. It gives her a break. … She is still my sole sense of independence.”
Before last month, Wiesing’s wife, Dana Wagner, would spend an hour showering him in the garage of his Las Vegas home with a long, black garden hose that snaked from the guest bathroom to the cement floor.
“Now he gets his dignity back,” Wagner said. “And (to) do his own care.”
Though the new additions to the home help, Wagner said getting used to the new life has been hard. Wiesing, a 13-year Navy hospital corpsman, became paralyzed from the waist down in June 2017, after a blood clot formed on his spine following surgery to replace the battery in his spinal cord stimulator.
That device was installed after Wiesing was injured in a 1989 helicopter accident while in the service.
“Some days … I think to myself, ‘How did we get here?’” Wagner said of adjusting to her husband’s paralysis. “Sometimes you can only take too much change at at time. We’re still doing that.”
The couple plan to make adjustments to the kitchen as well and help Guns to Hammers with its next project.
This project by Guns to Hammers, a Houston-based organization, was sponsored by many local businesses, including Tenaya Creek Brewery, Findlay Volvo Cars and Wallin Construction.
“The type of money we’re going after is the type that nobody is thinking about,” said JR Smith, the organization’s founder. He said the donations run from $10 to a couple of thousand a month.
The organization has about three projects going on in three states, he said.
Smith, a Marine Corps veteran, started the organization in 2015 after the contractor noticed the increased need for veterans to have ADA-compliant bathrooms.
“We build stuff you do not see in hospitals,” he said of the large shower, adding that Wiesing’s home renovations totaled about $21,000.
Renovations also included the widening of doors and the addition of granite countertops and floor tiles.
“It’s a crying shame that we have to do this, but it’s only the right thing to do,” Smith said. “We’re patriots, and truly being a patriot is taking care of one another.”
Contact Briana Erickson at berickson@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5244. Follow @brianarerick on Twitter.
