Young Jed is War Amps safety ambassador
Jed Seehagel didn’t know a lot about football before Thursday, but he’s a quick learner.
Rob Larmen, the director of The War Amps Playsafe/Drivesafe program, showed the sixyear-old Niagara boy how to hold a football by the laces, “and he was throwing some pretty good passes” to two Hamilton TigerCats team members Brandon Banks and Ja’Gared Davis.
“It was a lot of fun, it really was,” Larmen said. “It was quite an experience for young Jed. … There were just a ton of magical moments going on.”
Only three years earlier, Jed was fighting for his life after losing his right leg after a tragic accident at the family’s Pelham home in May 2016, when he was run over by a riding lawn mower.
But now, Jed is working with The War Amps and Canadian Football League, using that tragedy in the hope of preventing other children from suffering the same fate.
Jed, The War Amps 2019 National Safety Ambassador, teamed up with the Ticats players Thursday at Tim Hortons Field in Hamilton to film a public service announcement (PSA) for The War Amps. The arrangement is part of a 35-year partnership with the CFL.
After about an hour of filming Jed on his own, Banks and Davis joined him at Tim Hortons Field for about two more hours of filming the “first-rate athletes” tossing around the pig skin. The PSA will be broadcast starting in October during TSN’s coverage of CFL games, including the playoffs and Grey Cup. The PSA will also be broadcast on other networks as well as on social media websites.
“They really embraced young Jed and had a lot of fun with him, and really took a serious approach to our overall safety message,” Larmen said.
Larmen — himself a child amputee who lost his right leg about 40 years ago — said he first met Jed and the Seehagel family shortly after the accident, when Jed was enrolled in The War Amps Child Amputee (CHAMP) Program.
He called it a pleasure to see Jed recover and learn to run again, using his prosthetic leg.
“This young boy is so resilient. He is walking beautifully on an above-knee amputation.
“And I’ll tell you, it’s not an easy thing to do. This little boy is remarkable.”
The courage and determination that he puts in every stride is reflective of a beautiful gait. He’s doing so well,” Larmen said.
“He can run on it. He just goes, goes and goes. “Nothing slows him down.” Larmen said this year marks the first time in a decade that the Ticats have been the team featured in the PSA.
He said each year’s PSA “just gets better and better.”
“I think it’s because of the commitment, not only extended by the CFL, but also by the individual teams that we work with,” Larmen said. “They put a lot into this. “It’s a combined effort to get a serious message out to Canadian children, that they need to spot the danger and be careful of mean machines in their community.”
In a media release, Tiger-Cats president and COO Matt Afinec called the PSA “a powerful and important message for the health and safety of children throughout the Hamilton Region and across Canada, and we’re proud to have been selected to contribute to those efforts here in 2019.”