It’s March 27, 1969. I am talking on my field radio to Barky, a pilot in a spotter plane overlooking our elevated position in South Vietnam, a mile from the demilitarized zone. 

“Are you taking any incoming?” he asks. “No,” I respond. 

Five seconds later he sees what I only hear: a 61-millimeter mortar round that explodes behind me and tosses me to a spot where I make a three-point landing on my knees and head—with the full weight of my 60-pound rucksack on my upper back. I can’t move. “Do not panic,” I tell myself. I am not going to die from shock. I am on that hill for four hours before a transport helicopter considers it safe to land and rescue me. I am evacuated to a hospital ship with a temperature of 107. 

How have I gotten myself into this mess?

I entered Dartmouth in 1962 from Lower Merion High School, on the Main Line in suburban Philadelphia. My parents were functioning alcoholics, my father, class of 1942, abusive. I entered Dartmouth a pretty naïve and scared kid, which made my first two years there a true struggle. I had anger issues and felt intellectually out of my league. In New Hampshire Hall I was known as “The Rager.”

Only by having strong friendships—in Phi Delt and on the playing fields—and building a mental and physical toughness, with the help of coaches Tony Lupien (baseball) and Whitey Burnham (soccer), was I able to turn my situation around during my junior year. Having come to grips with my character flaws and academic shortcomings, I was able to graduate with distinction in geography and, after earning All-Ivy honors in soccer and posting a solid career ERA in baseball, was awarded the Watson Trophy as the best athlete in the senior class, all of which was unforeseeable as a freshman.

I married four days after graduation—a marriage that lasted 22 years before we divorced—and in the fall entered Penn’s graduate school of education with an emphasis in school administration. Admittedly, I was motivated in large part by wanting to avoid military service. I thought I was in control of my life, “free” at last. Then the selective service intervened and took away my student deferment. 

I was drafted into the Army in October 1967 and by July 1968 I was in Vietnam at the Con Thien combat base, three kilometers from North Vietnam. For eight months I carried the company radio, either sweating in 90-degree heat or being rained upon weeks at a time by the winter monsoons.  Often I humped 70 pounds and wore my flak vest 90 percent of the time. I found myself  wondering what I was doing walking through rice paddies with teenagers, led by an excessively gung-ho second lieutenant. Our C-rations were leftovers from the Korean War. I thought longingly of Hanover, where monsoon seasons were merely the subject of a lecture by professor Robert Huke. Until the day I was hit, I lived in constant fear. Yet I did not wear my flak vest that day.

On the hospital ship off the coast of Japan after my injury, I learned my spinal cord had been severed. Was this God’s revenge for me pithing a frog in “Bio 2”? I was a quad, not knowing what that meant. From Japan I went to the Chelsea Naval Hospital near Boston, where three Phi Delt brothers drove from Chicago for a visit I do not remember. The less said about that facility, the better. 

Fortunately I was rescued again, this time by Sen. Edward Kennedy’s office. After six weeks and three pressure sores, I was transferred to the West Roxbury, Massachusetts, Veterans Administration (VA) Hospital, which was an improvement but still inadequate. At this unprepared, understaffed facility, rehabilitation took far too long. There was no one there to push me or deal with my depression. Because I was a college graduate—a statistical anomaly, according to my Phi Delt roommate-turned-history professor Barry Machado ’66—no one saw the need to heal my brain. 

With my parents absent by choice, having written off my chances to have a future, my wife worked daily to keep me sane, and visits from Dartmouth friends were welcome therapy. Some helped with transportation, others helped set up my wife’s and my apartment on Tremont Street. I left the VA in February 1970 as a high-functioning quad—a paraplegic, according to some of my fellow patients, because I could open a flip-top beer.  

Jim Shaw ’67 had helped show me I could have a life: With our wives we had gone to Homecoming the previous October, my first big weekend outside of Boston. We’d also been to a New Year’s Eve party in the city. I still remember him pushing me across the frozen Frog Pond on Boston Common and somehow getting me up and down a winding staircase. Years later, after my wife and I moved to Palo Alto, California, he and I went on fishing trips that required him to get me into places I never thought I could reach. We played ping-pong and beer pong for countless hours. One night he and our wives pulled me up two flights of stairs at an historic hotel in Volcano, California. When we were together I felt as though I were free of my chair. 

Forty years later it was another classmate to the rescue: At a class 65th birthday celebration in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Wally Buschmann ’66 pushed and pulled my chair down a trail through Indian ruins. Such incidents have worked wonders for my ego and self-esteem. 

Life in a chair is difficult and maddening. In the beginning it was almost undoable. In the early 1970s challenges occurred daily. There was, as yet, no Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). There were no disabled parking spaces, disabled motel rooms, accessible transportation  options or decent seats at cultural or sporting events. Recently I was asked how I coped. I did not cope. I lived. I often reflected on Coach Lupien’s advice: “Make chicken salad out of chicken shit.”

“Never give up” became my motto as I built a successful career with the Social Security Administration, where I earned Disabled Employee of the Year honors in 1990. I coached my kids’ soccer teams and was on the local school board. I met and married my second wife, Mary, dubbed “St. Mary” by Coach Burnham. She has come to love the College as I do.

I drew on the support of Burnham, a role model and father figure who filled a void and subtly counseled me. Many were the occasions we chatted by phone or via the Internet. I was honored to be a speaker at the dedication of Burnham Field in 2008, and miss him to this day.

Life is good despite the challenges that persist even with the ADA in place: Two years ago a Kauai, Hawaii, TSA agent demanded I stand up and take off my belt. I won a spirited dispute as amused police officers stood by. With my wife I have enjoyed travels to Vienna and Paris and yearly trips to Hawaii—despite the encounter with the intransigent TSA agent. 

I have often noted that death is a matter of inches. A photo of Billy Smoyer ’67 is near my desk, causing me to reflect not only upon his death but those of many others killed in a mostly useless war. He and I played on the right side of the soccer field for two years and had many a good laugh on and off it. He was killed a week after I arrived in Vietnam, which was a real blow. I was friends with his parents and recently visited with his sister, Nancy. His family is a source of inspiration. 

In the past decade I have reconnected with other Dartmouth friends and many classmates through reunions, birthday cele-brations and homecomings. Last fall I rolled the entire parade by myself. I never realized Main Street is so steep! My times with College friends have allowed me to appreciate what the Dartmouth experience has done for me. Because of it, I’m not a gimp or super gimp, but perhaps a better man.                     

Peter Barber, now retired, lives in Santa Rosa, California, and Chatham, Massachusetts.