Streams of solace for injured vets

BRIDGEWATER - A Baghdad bomb wounded Army Staff Sgt. Brian Mancini's body and spirit.

Babbling creeks and cagey fish are helping him heal.

On a sunny afternoon in the Shenandoah Valley, Mancini cast a fly in front of a big trout, and in a flash of silver the fish took it.

For that moment, Mancini's pain disappeared.

"It's the best millisecond of your life," said Mancini, 29. "It's awesome."

The fishing trip was sponsored by Project Healing Waters, a nonprofit program that helps injured military personnel by teaching them the pastoral art of fly-fishing.

On July 23, 2007, Mancini and others were patrolling southern Baghdad when a powerful bomb hit their armored Humvee.

Shrapnel ripped into Mancini's face and head, destroying his right eye and leaving serious scars.

"My whole face has been rebuilt," he said.

He is recuperating at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. A few months ago, volunteers from Project Healing Waters encouraged him to try fly-fishing.

"It keeps me sane," the Phoenix native said.

Part of Mancini's left hand is numb, and, missing an eye, he has no depth perception.

"It takes forever to put a fly on sometimes, but it definitely helps in getting those skills back."

Mancini's wife, Ashley, watched her husband cast repeatedly during an event Saturday at Mossy Creek, just south of Harrisonburg.

"Over here it's just different," she said. "He's at peace. Relaxed. His mind is taken off everything else in the world."

. . .

Joshua Williams was born in Richmond and raised in Roanoke. He served in Iraq in 2004 and early 2005 as an Army machine gunner. He saw action in Fallujah, Najaf and other Iraqi hot spots.

He escaped injury until he returned home. On April 6, 2006, outside Fort Hood, Texas, the staff sergeant was riding his motorcycle to guard duty when, he said, another vehicle struck him. He lost his right arm.

"I should have gotten killed over there [in Iraq] many times, but I didn't get a scratch," said Williams, 24. "Then I come back home and get jacked up. . . . It's kind of funny when you think about it."

Williams went to Walter Reed to heal and rehab. He was angry, sad and depressed, thinking about all the things he loved to do and couldn't, such as fishing, when Project Healing Waters volunteers met him.

He learned to cast with one arm and pull in the line with his teeth. The experience got him over a physical and emotional hump.

"It was the thing that I did that said, 'Wow, I can fish now -- I can do anything.'"

. . .

Project Healing Waters got its start four years ago when Ed Nicholson, a retired Navy captain in Port Tobacco, Md., began visiting patients at Walter Reed.

"Originally, I just wanted to go down and see if any of those guys wanted to go fly-fishing or bird hunting or whatever."

A supportive staff member saw the physical and emotional benefits of fly-fishing, Nicholson said. So Nicholson and other volunteers began teaching patients the sport and taking them fishing.

As word spread, more people donated time and equipment.

"Before you knew it, we were gathering a lot of momentum," Nicholson said.

Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing Inc. became a nonprofit group in January 2007. Today, volunteers from local fishing clubs run about 20 affiliated programs in at least 15 states, including one at McGuire Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Richmond.

Project Healing Waters has two paid employees. The volunteers at McGuire are members of a local club, Fly Fishers of Virginia.

"It's a good program. . . . We use it as another tool for rehab," said Bertelle Bunyard, a recreation therapist at McGuire.

The fishing event at Mossy Creek drew about 80 people, including 13 active or former military personnel who had been injured. It raised more than $80,000 through corporate sponsorships, raffles and donations.

"This is a way to thank all those people who served, and it wasn't always this way," said Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England, a fly fisherman himself. "We have some people here who are Vietnam veterans, and when they came home, people didn't treat them well at all."

. . .

Another angler at Mossy Creek was Don Stewart, 54, of Lumberton, N.C., a retired Army staff sergeant. He lost the use of his legs in a 2003 motorcycle crash and now uses a wheelchair.

Last year and earlier this year, Stewart was in McGuire for follow-up surgery and rehab when he learned to fly-fish.

The sport involves casting again and again, delicately dropping your fly near the fish while keeping your falling line far enough away to keep from scaring it. No bait, just skill and patience in a pretty, pastoral place.

"Throwing for an hour or two can whip you pretty good if you're not used to doing something like that," Stewart said.

"It's just something else I thought that I'd never be able to do, and I'm out doing it."
Contact Rex Springston at (804) 649-6453 or rspringston@timesdispatch.com