Israeli Paralympian medallist to visit city
Israel’s 2012 Paralympic Games gold medallist in wheelchair tennis will be in Saskatoon on Thursday to give a talk in support of members of the Humboldt Broncos who are recovering after the collision involving their team bus.
News of the April 6 collision between a semi truck and the charter bus taking the Broncos to a Nipawin playoff game reached Noam Gershony via friends in Canada soon after it happened. Sixteen people died and 13 were injured.
“I’ve been through a crisis and a big change and I underwent a long process of rehabilitation and I knew that the survivors, they’re going to have a long process of rehabilitation — and not just physical rehabilitation, but also mental and psychological therapies and having to deal with loss, not just with their new physical disabilities, but with the loss of their friends,” he told the Starphoenix on Wednesday.
In 2006, Gershony was piloting an Israeli Defense Forces helicopter that crashed during the war with Lebanon. His co-pilot died and Gershony was paralyzed.
Part of what got him through the recovery process was the support from friends and family, but it was also the feeling he had to keep going because he survived and he had friends who did not, he said.
“I felt the fact that I’m alive and I’m here, I had to rehabilitate and not to be down and not to be depressed of my mental or physical status because I’m here,” he said.
He felt it was important to him, his family and families of the people who died that the survivors move forward, concentrate on the good things they have and cherish the memory of those who died.
He started to play wheelchair tennis as he recovered. Six years later, he was atop the podium at the 2012 Paralympic Games in London. Gershony said he hopes members of the Broncos are able to attend the talk, but if they can’t, he hopes they can meet the next time he visits Canada. This is his first visit to Saskatoon.
Gershony is scheduled to speak at the Congregation Agudas Israel Synagogue as a guest of the Jewish National Fund of Manitoba and Saskatchewan. The synagogue was recently the site of a vigil in support of the victims of the shooting in Pittsburgh in which 11 people died.