At Sunday’s parade, you’ll find a veteran in a wheelchair who savors life

Kenny Rogers exudes vigor. The guy swims, cycles, and trap shoots competitively. He has a couple of hundred medals won in competitions.

This 82-year-old Las Vegan has vitality and could easily pass for 65.

When he participates in the Veterans Day Parade on Sunday, don’t look for someone frail and doddering. Look for the guy with the wavy silver hair (and a lot of it) that still has some of its original black. Look for those clear blue eyes. Look for the guy with a zest for life, not someone beaten down by misfortune.

Look for someone who has spent nearly 35 years in a wheelchair and will be participating in the Veterans Day parade as a proud member of the Paralyzed Veterans of America.

This World War II veteran, who spent four years in the Navy in the Pacific, was injured in a skiing accident after the war, not during the war. But he’s still paralyzed and he’s still a veteran.

Like so many other high school boys, he joined the Navy in January 1943, a year after the U.S. joined the war.

Kenny, just 17, joined as a seaman first class and left four years later as a petty officer third class.

The sailor from Columbus, Ohio, served all over the Pacific, including the battles of Tinian and Saipan in the Mariana Islands in 1944, when he was serving on the USS New Jersey. In 1945, he participated in the naval campaign that bombarded Iwo Jima.

“Afterwards, we came back from the war, went back to school and made our way in life,” he said. Naturally athletic, he went to Hollywood to be a professional dancer, met a girl in his rooming house who was an ice-skater and ended up joining her show. Ice-skating took him around the world for 20 years.

Then a two-week ski vacation ended with him taking a job as a ski patrolman. He was working at Mammoth Mountain on the ski patrol in 1973 when he was injured. “I was planting five-pound detonators for avalanche control when the snow ledge broke off.”

He fell 80 feet and hit the rocks below. He hasn’t walked since.

But he still swims, cycles on a three-wheeler and is a competitive trap shooter. In 1996, he left Ohio and moved to Las Vegas for a job that never materialized.

“I’ve had a varied life. I’ve been lucky enough to have visited 90 countries in the Navy and while ice-skating in the ’50s and ’60s. Some people hit 65, retire and don’t do anything,” he said. “I’ll have been in this wheelchair 35 years in March. I could easily just sit here and get fat.”

But the man who spent his career being fit said vanity wouldn’t allow him to do that. In 2008, he plans to compete at seven events locally and nationally. One year he attended 15 competitions. He’ll compete in swimming, field events, and air guns at the next National Paralyzed Veterans of America Games.

Assume he’s an inspiration for other veterans in wheelchairs and you assume wrong. “Actually, I inspire the able-bodied more than the people with problems,” he said.

At one point during our interview, he had to stop. Intense pain in one leg struck him for a few minutes and he couldn’t control his grimaces.

But then the vigor returned and he talked about the reaction today when he says he’s Kenny Rogers. “When they ask me to sing a song, I reply: Show me your checkbook.”

Black and white photos cover his “life wall” in the ranch home he designed. Pictures of him dancing, skating, skiing and sitting in a red sports car. One with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev during a skating show tour of Russia. A shot of skater Sonja Henie and Kenny. And a whole bunch of autographed glamour shots of stunning women. The sultry brunette “Jinx” signed hers: “This is to keep all the nice memories fresh.”

“I was just a chorus girl’s plaything,” Kenny laughed.

Surely there’s some linkage between Kenny Rogers’ laughter and his vigor. It can’t just be a matter of self-discipline common to so many of the World War II veterans.

Jane Ann Morrison’s column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. E-mail her at Jane@reviewjournal.com or call (702) 383-0275.