A Soldier's
Story
by George Mannes
April 25,
2008
On a rooftop in Iraq, a mortar shell shattered Ivan Castro's eyesight and, for the time being at least, his military career. Now he's on a new mission: proving to the Army and the world that he's still fit to serve.
In
October 2006, after seven weeks as a patient at National Naval
Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.—four of them in intensive
care—1st Lieut. Ivan Castro was still in bad shape. The
month before, he'd been hit by mortar fire during combat in Iraq,
shrapnel ripping through his body, causing multiple injuries that
had left him near death. During his stay in the hospital, Castro
had lost 40 pounds. He could walk only about 10 steps before collapsing
into a wheelchair. Worse still, the explosion had blown out one
of his eyes and badly damaged the other. He was blind. Permanently.
Lying
in his bed, Castro overheard a doctor and nurse talking about
their recent run in the Marine Corps Marathon, a 26.2-mile race
held annually in the Washington, D.C. area. Impulsively he set
what seemed to be an outrageous goal. In one year, Castro promised
himself, he would run the marathon. "I'm going to show everybody
this is not going to take me down," Castro, 40, recalls telling
himself. "This won't put me out of the fight."
Castro's
can-do optimism in the face of grim situations had served him
well in numerous combat zones. Now he needed it at home. Up until
the attack, he'd had his future mapped out. He planned to spend
30 years on active duty, then retire on an officer's pension.
He would make extra money buying homes and renting them out. And
he'd build a dream house for himself, his wife Evelyn, 34, and
the kids they would have together.
The
mortar fire shattered those plans. Since the explosion, recovering
has become his full-time job—months of physical rehabilitation
and instruction in coping with blindness, interspersed with additional
surgeries to repair his body. He's had to come to terms with losing
not only his vision but also his independence and possibly his
livelihood. He can no longer get himself to such routine destinations
as the gym or the barbershop, much less lead soldiers into battle.
And there are financial strains: Evelyn quit her job to help Ivan
recover, while Ivan worries about what will happen to his income
if the Army discharges him for medical reasons.
Their
story is being repeated, with variations on the theme, in military
households across the country. Ivan Castro is just one of more
than 13,000 members of the armed services so severely wounded
in post-9/11 conflicts that they couldn't immediately return to
active duty. More than 5,500 have suffered traumatic brain injuries.
Hundreds have had limbs amputated or, like Castro, lost their
eyesight. All face a terrifyingly uncertain future. "They
have to figure out from this moment on what they want their life
to look like—what they want their career to be, what they
want for their family," says Cary Carbonaro, a certified
financial planner who has worked with injured soldiers. "That's
tough for anyone, but really rough if you're also struggling with
a disability."
Unfortunately,
what Castro yearns for most may be out of reach. "I just
want to live a normal life again, have people treat me normally
and continue doing the work I really love," he says. He adds,
"If the Army would let me, I'd stay in 50 years."
When
Castro enlisted in 1990, he didn't think he'd stay in the
Army long. A senior at the University of Puerto Rico, Castro found
himself losing interest in his studies and decided to take a short
break from school. (At age 12 the Hoboken, N.J. native had moved
to the island with his mom, who was divorced from his dad.) He
was deployed almost immediately as an infantryman in the Gulf
War and later served in the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s. He
quickly learned he loved the camaraderie of Army life—plus
the adrenaline rush. "I love shooting and blowing through
doors and walls and doing tasks that you think, 'Man, can we do
this? Oh, yeah, we can!'" He applied to join the Army Special
Forces, earning his Green Beret in 2000. "I was always looking
for a challenge," says Castro. "Always looking for excitement."
Married
in 1990, he and his wife had one child, Ivan Eduardo, in 1993,
before they divorced in 1997. (Castro gets to spend time with
his son, who lives with his ex-wife in Virginia, about once a
month and helps support him financially.) He met Evelyn while
on vacation two years later, and they married in 2001. The following
year they bought a three-bedroom $98,000 house in Raeford, N.C.,
near Fort Bragg, where Castro was based.
The
couple lived comfortably enough on Ivan's $50,000-a-year income.
Evelyn attended grad school to get a master's degree in speech
pathology while Ivan was away for months at a time, training in
the jungles of Central America or conducting drug-war exercises
in Colombia. Between deployments they'd travel, relying on Evelyn's
earnings from a part-time job teaching English as a second language—about
$10,000 a year—for "fun money."
Their
income grew as the years passed. Once Evelyn got her degree in
2004, she landed a job as a public school speech pathologist that
paid $40,000. Ivan went to night school to finish his B.A.—a
prerequisite for Officer Candidate School. He graduated in 2004
as a second lieutenant, which raised his pay to about $70,000
a year.
The
couple's goals were clear: Evelyn aspired to one day open a private
speech pathology clinic. Ivan wanted to stay in the military for
at least 10 more years and manage rental properties as a sideline.
(He started in 2006 by purchasing the house next door for $124,000.)
And once Ivan returned from Iraq—he was deployed in July
2006—they'd start having kids.
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opinions and views expressed in this publication are for general
information only and are not necessarily those of Mutual of America
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