The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
After long, painful recovery, veteran ready for the spotlight
Marietta man among those picking films on TCM this weeekend.
After Eric Hunter stepped on an IED in Afghanistan, medics gave him his life back.
Problem was, he wasn’t sure he wanted it.
The explosion destroyed his right leg and severely injured his left leg. He underwent more than 60 surgeries at Walter Reed Army Medical Center as doctors worked to salvage what remained.
“For three months in the hospital, it was like surgery every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and the other days, I was recovering,” said the Marietta resident. “The doctor said, ‘I can save your left leg, just give me time.’ But I didn’t know it was going to take four years.”
Hunter spoke from a greenroom at Turner Studios in Midtown, where he was one of eight veterans asked to choose and introduce movies for the Veterans Day weekend lineup for Turner Classic Movies.
These days, Hunter, 31, looks confident. A weightlifter with arms like John Cena’s, he can benchpress 385. He is also a part-time movie actor with a Clark Kent jawline. With him at Turner is his loving wife, Kenna, and crawling on the floor is their adorable pre-toddler, Adley. It’s difficult to imagine Hunter as a pill-addicted soldier who tried to drive his wife away, so she wouldn’t go down the tubes with him.
“I was sure I was going to have a bad life,” said Hunter. “I thought they were going to be better off without me.”
Kenna came close to leaving — or showing Hunter the exit. “So many days I was looking for the biggest set of stairs to push him down,” said Kenna, hoisting Adley to her lap. “But I knew if I was going through it, I’d want Eric to have my back, even if I was an a-hole.”
On this morning, Eric had just emerged from in front of the cameras.
Each veteran had the opportunity to choose his or her own film to host for the special slate of movies being broadcast by the cable channel this Saturday and Sunday. Hunter chose “The Green Berets,” the 1968 valentine to the Army Special Forces, starring actor John Wayne, who also directed.
Turner worked with veterans organizations to find their guest-hosting soldiers.
When Army Sgt. Eric Hunter, a native of Monroeville, Ala., enlisted in 2009, he had high hopes of becoming a Green Beret himself. He served first in Iraq, an uneventful stint in 2010. He redeployed in 2012, and was sent to the southern Helmand province of Afghanistan. There his unit built a school and did what they could to support the local population.
Then, on May 31, one day before his one-year wedding anniversary with Kenna, Hunter’s unit came under enemy fire. During
the scramble, Hunter’s foot found a booby trap.
Lying on the ground, he kept telling himself, “Please be alive, please be alive.”
Emergency responders kept him in a medically induced coma through the next day, and when he finally got Kenna on the satellite phone a day later, he apologized for missing their anniversary.
“She didn’t want to hear that at all,” he said, as Adley crawled over and under coffee tables and chairs. “She just wanted to hear my voice and be sure that I was OK.”
While he was at Walter Reed, he was buoyed by visits from a variety of supporters. Pop songster Neil Diamond came by and brought him an acoustic guitar, so he could revive his front-porch picking. The members of Kiss signed his guitar while he was in surgery one day.
Pink Floyd founder Roger Waters drafted Hunter to play with the MusicCorps Wounded Warrior Band, and Hunter found himself performing at Madison Square Garden with the rock star.
But the pain wasn’t going away. Eventually Hunter was on 30 Oxycodone pills a day. He decided to quit cold turkey. “That was a week and a half of the worst time in my life,” he said. “Getting blown up wasn’t hard; that was the easy part.”
It’s not a surprise that he is at ease before the camera with Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz. Hunter has accepted a few acting jobs, including the lead in an independent movie, “In the Middle of the River.”
He and his family are also looking forward to moving into a specially built house in Fayetteville, with the support of the Gary Sinise Foundation.
Hunter also speaks to school groups, including ROTC cadets, who are sometimes surprised to see him enter the classroom on his artificial leg.
“I walk in and their faces turn ghost white,” Hunter said. The students are clearly wondering whether they’ve made a mistake with plans to join the military.
“I tell them, ‘I support your decision.’”