The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Sheffield Lake veteran’s business is her way of giving back
Black speckles decorate the hands, arms and legs of former Army photojournalist Kelly Hunt.
It is a reminder of the pieces of shrapnel that ripped through her body from a suicide bomber attack.
A veteran of the Afghanistan war, Hunt spent her time in the service dedicated to making a difference not only for the country but for the world.
“You cover events when you’re deployed that involve 32 other nations. You’re on missions and you interact with others,” she said.
Hunt, a blonde curly haired, soft-voiced resident of Sheffield Lake, said she always loved to travel and had a passion for service and helping others. The oldest of three, Hunt knew she wanted to join the military prior to Sept. 11, 2001, but after that day, she knew it was what she truly wanted to do.
“Our generation had never seen anything like 9/11,” Hunt said. “Like all Americans we felt like we needed to do something.”
Hunt spent her time in the military documenting missions as a photojournalist during two tours in Afghanistan. During her service, she witnessed children killed by the Taliban, explosions and war-torn families.
During her deployment, her troop was focused on making connection with locals.
“We have to have a strong connection that supersedes what the Taliban’s connection to locals was,” she said. “You’re an outsider coming to a country and vaccinating them. You have to be trustworthy.”
Hunt said it was challenging to build these relationships because the Taliban was trying to cut the connections her troop made with locals.
“It wasn’t just writing articles,” Hunt said. “It was ‘how do we become a trustworthy source that the locals believe in?’”
Also, Hunt recalled that because of her gender she received less respect than her male peers from local citizens, but she remained inquisitive and found new ways to access information and stories.
Women in Bagram, Afghanistan, would open up to Hunt in ways they weren’t able to with her male counterparts. For Hunt, that gave her the chance to connect with her sources and the community on a deeper level.
“A girl can talk to the mom, I was so blessed to be able to have that advantage
and where I could talk to mom and hear what was really going on,” Hunt said.
Despite getting to interact with people from across the world and live out her career, Hunt said she wasn’t able to forget the horrors of war despite being a photojournalist.
“You’re not exempt from the reality of being a soldier at war,” Hunt said. “We saw what you saw and we’re taking photos while we’re all experiencing what war is.”
Hunt finished her deployment in 2004 and came back to the United States.
From there, she took various jobs that involved communications. In 2012, Hunt became a public diplomacy officer for the U.S. Department of State.
In 2013, Hunt was serving in Afghanistan when she and her teammates were delivering books to the youth in Zabul, a southern province in Afghanistan as part of the program My Afghan Library. Their goal was to deliver books in their native language Pashtu to help support the advancement of education.
They were attacked by two suicide bombers who detonated two improvised explosive devices. Five of Hunt’s teammates and friends were killed the attack.
She was thrown into a barbed wire fence with shrapnel embedded throughout her body. Bloody and unconscious, Hunt was thought to be dead. She was taken to a morgue in Afghanistan and pronounced dead.
At the last moment, someone discovered she was actually in a coma having suffered a traumatic brain injury and damage to her hands, legs and arms.
Hunt was immediately taken to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany after the attack, where she was put in a medically induced coma.
Members of Sheffield Lake came together to raise enough money for her mother to travel to Germany.
“Without the community coming together with these fundraisers there was no way it would have been able to happen,” Hunt said.
She was eventually moved to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Washington, where she continued to receive medical treatment. From there, she was transferred to a Cleveland hospital for rehabilitation.
“I had a year of forced recovery and I had to learn how to walk again,” Hunt said. “I woke up from the coma and all I wanted to do was get back to work.”
Instead of traditional therapy, she decided to take her therapies into her own hands and created a business to help her cognitive and physical therapies.
“I started making all natural products,” she said. “My outpatient time was mixing laundry detergent with my hands. I was looking up recipes and figuring things out. It was more fun than using the balls.”
“CDK Natural does book and magazine drives on a continuous basis. It’s my way of continuing to serve. I can’t serve the way I was.” — Kelly Hunt