Veteran takes disability in STRIDE
Liaison for adaptive sports group advocates from personal experience
WEST SAND LAKE, N.Y. » Don Tallman thanks his wife, Sharon, for the day she gave him an ultimatum: “Do something or we are leaving.”
In 2008, while serving in Afghanistan, Tallman sustained nerve damage to the left side of his body. The injury made it difficult for him to engage in any physical activity without feeling intense pain. The injury not only ended his military career, but also challenged his identity.
“I was in the military for almost 20 years and suddenly was pulled out of deployment because of an injury,” he remembered recently. “Everything stopped, just like that. I used to be extremely active. I used to be a marathoner, I was in two running clubs, I had my circles. After my injury, I couldn’t do that anymore.”
Enduring countless surgeries also took its toll.
“I went through a very tough stage of depression and was doing nothing,” he said, until the day his wife spoke up.
The next day, Tallman joined the Wounded Warrior Project to create a new “normal” by working with other veterans. Tallman, who lives in Glenville and works in the registrar’s office at Union College in Schenectady, was an alumni ambassador for the upstate New York Wounded Warrior Project and first heard about STRIDE when he attended an event in 2013 on the Union campus he thought was part of the Wounded Warrior Project, but later found out it was a STRIDE Wounded Warrior Program. After the event, Tallman reached out to Mary Ellen Whitney, CEO and founder of STRIDE Adaptive Sports, and learned about the group’s many programs and activities for disabled veterans.
He started skiing with his children through one of STRIDE’s programs and recently traded his running shoes for a hand cy-
cle to complete his first 5K race. Today, Tallman is the veteran liaison for STRIDE, which is based in West Sand Lake and was founded 31 years ago by Whitney to provide adaptive equipment to children with disabilities and teach them independent, lifetime activities.
“I started this program to fill in the gap for what public school systems should be doing, but were not,” Whitney, a former teacher, explained.
Today, STRIDE is a nationally known program with 28 locations in three states. The program helps about 2,500 families by providing equipment and opportunity
while teaching 8,000 adaptive lessons a year. The goal is to teach independent, lifetime sports, including everything from archery to golf to whitewater rafting.
A planned expansion being done entirely with donated supplies and time will add a recreation and education center with meeting rooms, a gym, lounge, bowling alley and multipurpose center at the new facility the group moved into last year on Route 150.
“What’s cool is that in today’s society, regardless of a disability, you can participate in any sport due to technology,” Whitney said. “If you can dream it, you can do it. You can jump out of an airplane or scuba dive no matter what your disability is.”
Tallman attended his
first STRIDE event in 2013 and learned to ski using adaptive equipment soon thereafter.
“The main message I tell other veterans is to get out of the house, try something new,” he said. “There’s always a way to do something, even if it’s different.”
Tallman’s first formal activity as veteran liaison was to organize a STRIDE camping trip.
“I told Mary Ellen right off the bat, I want to do things to get veterans together,” Tallman said, explaining that talking to others with similar experiences can be a first step to regaining independence.
“The one thing I tell my kids is that everything happens for a reason,” Tallman said. “If I didn’t go through what I’ve gone through, I would not have met half of the people that I know. It’s not necessarily better, but it’s different.”