The Sky is the Limit for the Airborne Amputees and ACA Members

A group of over 150 amputees, including ACA certified Peer Visitor Jody Graham, signed up to skydive at the 3rd annual Airborne Amputee event in Houston, Texas on May 1st, but the weather just didn’t cooperate.

Although the cloud cover prevented the multitudes from jumping on Saturday, the event’s guests of honor, a group of 20 amputee Wounded Warriors from Brook Army Base, and a few other determined amputees returned to Skydive Spaceland the next morning to complete their mission and skydive.

The Challenge

The idea for the Airborne Amputees was born out of a simple challenge - a challenge from Jody Graham’s prosthetist Ben Falls that grew into a life changing event for hundreds of amputees.

Years earlier during one of her prosthetic appointments, Jody mentioned to Ben, who is an amputee himself, that she had been skydiving before she lost her right leg and she was not confident that she would be able to jump as an amputee. Ben, who had skydived following his amputation, chuckled and told Jody that ‘the sky is the limit for amputees’ and laid down a challenge to Jody. Ben told the cautious amputee to think about it and when she was ready to jump, he’d be jumping alongside her.

The Beginning

In the months after Jody lost her right leg in a car accident in 2002, she realized that her journey from amputation to becoming an active amputee was much more difficult than it should have been. She felt as if there was no one who could truly relate to her as an amputee, and she felt she was left in the dark about what life would be like as an amputee.

Unhappy with the lack of support she had received and armed with the desire to help other amputees; she began visiting area hospitals in the hopes of providing support to amputee patients. Jody met with hospital administrators but unfortunately, her offers of assistance in visiting those who had just lost their limbs fell on deaf ears. No one was interested.