Noah Galloway: Losing arm, leg was 'best thing that ever happened to me'

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Losing an arm and leg due to an explosive in war takes a tremendous toll on a person, but Iraq war veteran Noah Galloway today told Hoover chamber members it was the best thing that ever happened to him.

Galloway, speaking at the Hoover Area Chamber of Commerce at the Hoover Country Club, said that event changed his life completely and the lives of his children.

Losing his limbs wasn’t the best thing because he ended up being named the “Ultimate Guy” by Men’s Health magazine due to his strong physical recovery or gaining notoriety by coming in third place on the “Dancing with the Stars” TV show, he said.

It was the best thing because of the type of person he ended up becoming, Galloway said.

“If I hadn’t been injured, if I hadn’t gone through my depression, if I hadn’t gone through those struggles, I wouldn’t be the father I am today or the person I am, and for that I am grateful,” he said.

Galloway first joined the Army soon after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001. He was a 20-year-old student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, was physically fit, loved his country and felt called to serve, he said.

As a member of the Army’s 101st Airborne Division, he was part of the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003 and loved the experience, he said.

Politics aside, “going to war was extremely exciting,” Galloway said. “I was a guy with a group of men into a foreign country with a mission, and I loved every minute of it. Going village to village, building to building, room to room, it was like being in a movie, and it was exciting.”

He re-enlisted and was determined to make a career of it, but his second deployment to Iraq was much different than the first, he said. His unit was sent to southwest Baghdad in an area known as the “Triangle of Death” because of high casualty rates, and within the first week, they lost five guys, he said.

“Every time we turned around, we’d lost another friend, another buddy,” he said.

On Dec. 19, 2005, his platoon was split up for two missions and when they finished their missions, he drove the lead vehicle to go pick up the rest of the platoon and a tripwire set off a bomb that threw his 9,000-pound armored Humvee through the air into a canal by the road, he said.

Six days later, he woke up in Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, having lost his left arm and left leg. He went through so many emotions in the hospital, one minute thinking he was OK and could handle it and the next minute angry or crying like a baby, he said.

His sister brought his 1-year-old son to meet him while he was in physical therapy, and he just started crying, realizing he needed to be there for his son, he said. He moved back to Alabama, entered a second marriage and had two more children, but that marriage failed also, he said.

“When I moved back to Alabama, I was not a good person,” Galloway said. “I was going through depression and denial like I had never experienced. … If I wasn’t out drinking all night, I was sleeping all day, and the only time I was cleaned up was when the kids were there.”

Finally, one day his three children were sitting on his couch watching cartoons, and a shot of reality hit him like a ton of bricks, he said. He realized he was setting a poor example of what a man should be for his two boys and little girl, he said.

“The person I was was not anybody I wanted my boys to be or my girl to find,” Galloway said. “That was when I knew I needed to make a change.”

He started eating better, going to a 24-hour gym, working out and running 5Ks, 10Ks, marathons and even a “Spartan Death Race” in the mountains of Vermont that was designed to break people mentally and physically, he said. Out of 100 people who started the race, he was one of 20 who finished it, he said.

Men’s Health magazine found out about him, named him the “Ultimate Guy” for 2014 and put him on the cover of the magazine. He was the first veteran amputee to be on the cover, he said.

He started getting calls from media outlets for interviews and, after being featured on Ellen DeGeneres’ TV show, the phone calls and invitations started flooding in, he said.

He was invited to be on the “Survivor” TV show and then another TV show that had a race similar to the Spartan Death Race, but he turned both down because he would have had to spend too much time away from his children, he said.

Then the producers from “Dancing with the Stars” called and wanted him. He at first told them no, but when they offered to let him do rehearsals at home in Alabama and have his dance pro, Sharna Burgess, come to him, he agreed.

He didn’t like dancing, but “I’m really glad I did the show,” he said. “I got to experience a whole different world.”

His story spread to an entirely different audience and opened opportunities for him as a motivational speaker, he said.

“No one should ever second-guess anything that’s happened in their life,” Galloway said. “Even the bad things — something good comes out of it. We tell our kids that all the time, but sometimes we have to remind ourselves. It doesn’t matter how old we get. There are still obstacles in life. There are still struggles.”

Average people do average things and quit when they reach an obstacle, he said. “But exceptional people find a way to go over, around, under or through that obstacle.”

He encouraged those in attendance at the chamber luncheon to not make excuses when they face obstacles.

“Obstacles are not excuses,” he said. “They are ammunition to use, and only you can decide how you’re going to use them. We decide our future and what we’re going to do.”

Galloway invited people to participate in a golf tournament he started sponsoring last year to raise money for a No Excuses Charitable fund he started to provide money and awareness for organizations that support mental, physical and emotional wellness and inspire others to enlist healthy habits in their daily lives.

Last year’s golf tournament benefited Sheepdog Impact Assistance, an organization that works to improve the lives of veterans and first responders. This year’s tournament on Sept. 16 at the Timberline Golf Club in Calera, Galloway’s current residence, is raising money for Homes for Our Troops, which builds houses for injured veterans.

For more information about Galloway and his golf tournament, go to noahgalloway.com or noexcusesgolf.com.