A group of over 150 amputees, including ACA-certified peer visitor Jody Graham, signed up to skydive at the third annual Airborne Amputees event in Houston, Texas, on May 1, 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 Brooke Army Medical Center, 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 skydived 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 hope 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. 

Rejected by the very parties that had contributed to her dissatisfaction, Jody gave up on her dream of helping other amputees. Then she happened upon Joe Sansone, the founder of Limbs of Love and CEO of a Houston prosthetic company. Through Joe, she learned about the ACA and its National Peer Network. In 2006, they both attended the ACA’s peer visitor training program and Jody was certified as a peer visitor by the ACA.   

Joining the Challenge
Jody’s experience as an ACA peer visitor quickly gave her newfound confidence as she restored hope in other amputees, letting them know that they could accomplish whatever they put their mind to.  

Although Jody truly believed this message she was spreading to the patients she visited, she still had doubts about taking on her prosthetist’s skydiving challenge. Jody’s previous skydiving experience before her amputation ended when she hit the ground hard and her instructor toppled over on top of her. Still fearful, she wasn’t willing to risk injury as an amputee.

As time went by, Jody felt a bit hypocritical; her reluctance to skydive continued to nag at her. Her desire to achieve and inspire other amputees wouldn’t allow her to let the challenge go unanswered. After all, how could she expect other amputees to challenge themselves, if she wasn’t setting an example and challenging herself?

Throwing caution to the wind, Jody decided to accept her prosthetist’s challenge, realizing that after losing her leg, leaping out of an airplane was nothing. In the following weeks, Jody found herself sharing her vision to skydive with other amputees and saw how the idea to skydive motivated and inspired others.

Jody remembers what it was like to see the glimmer of hope in one man’s eyes when she told him, “Get back up and put on your leg and show the world what you can do. Come skydive with us!” And just like that, the Airborne Amputees was born. 

The Role of the ACA
Jody is able to speak firsthand about her experiences with the ACA. “I found in the ACA exactly what I had been looking for all along,” she says. “The very desire that I had once had to help amputees and counsel them on life as an amputee had been developed by the ACA into an entire program and was in place all over the country.”

 On the date of the third annual Airborne Amputees event, an estimated 100 of the 150 amputees who signed up to jump were ACA members. Limbs of Love founder Joe Sansone stated that he feels so strongly about the benefits of the ACA that he provides ACA enrollment forms as well as educational materials from the ACA to all amputees that he encounters. 

“The ACA’s mission is to reach out to people with limb loss and to empower them through education, support and advocacy. And that’s one of our goals in being here today,” says Sansone, “to support these patients and show the world that literally, the sky’s the limit following amputation.” 

With this year’s festivities attracting a crowd of nearly 200 amputees, along with friends and family members, Jody is still in awe.

“Three years ago, I would have never realized what this event would turn into. What started out with a few amputees skydiving has turned into a major event. We had a crowd of nearly 1,000 join us at Skydive Spaceland to support Limbs of Love,” recalls Jody. “There were bands and contests, a motivational speaker and even a flyover of World War II-era planes; I could never have imagined all of this was possible.”

Restoring Hope
Jody recounts with obvious emotion one visit that she made as an ACA-certified peer visitor. While visiting a young man in the hospital who had just lost his leg 2 days earlier, he began shouting, “I know you, I know who you are!” Earlier that morning, Jody had appeared on a local television news show promoting the Airborne Amputees. Her patient sobbed uncontrollably as he said, “I was so worried about what my life was going to be like without my leg. I thought my life was over, but when I saw your group on TV and heard you say that ‘life is not over after amputation,’ I knew I was going to be OK.”

And that’s exactly what Jody and the Airborne Amputees accomplished at their third annual event, when they proved to the world that “life is not over after amputation.”