“But the other two girls were sisters and they ended up following through on it quicker than my daughter did,” said Ashley’s mom, Suzi Wright. “Ashley wanted to do it, then she wasn’t so sure.”
“I think I was ... maybe ... a little scared at first,” Ashley now admits. So instead she took a year off and worked as a receptionist at an Englewood medical office.
“One day, though, she came home and she was kind of feeling sorry for herself,” Suzi said. “She kept talking about how the other two girls were living her dream. Finally, I told her, ‘Look, there’s no reason to feel this way. If you want it, there’s nothing you can’t do.’ And so the next day she goes and signs up for the Marines.
“Then I felt like I’d pushed her over the edge and I started thinking: ‘What have you done? What did you just do to your girl?’ ”
Two years and 19 days after joining the Marines — as she was riding in that convoy — Ashley took a moment to listen to her iPod, and just then a Jars of Clay song began playing.
“It’s the only Christian song I have on there and maybe I heard it then for a reason,” she said. “Right then we all needed to be blessed.
“And the next thing I remember is a strong flash of light, almost like a flame in front of me, and after that ... nothing,” she said quietly. “Nothing at all.”
Her vehicle had hit a roadside bomb and the blast knocked her unconscious. She’s been told she was lifted out of the turret and was placed on the nearby ground.
“When I came to, they say I got back on my radio and called in a report of the incident and got help,” she said. “I got a certificate of commendation for it, but I don’t remember ever making the call. I don’t remember any of it.”
Delayed reaction
Ashley was recounting her story by phone last weekend from Colorado Springs, Colo., where she was taking part in the Warrior Games, the Olympic-style athletic competition held for wounded, ill or injured military personnel.
She said after that IED blast neither she nor her superiors had realized the seriousness of the injury she had suffered:
“Everybody was shook up and shrapnel did go into the front of the vehicle, but it didn’t get through my layers of clothing,” she said. “I went back to camp in Fallujah to get some sleep and then I kept working. I actually didn’t come back home from Iraq for three more months.”
During that time, though, she began realizing something wasn’t right — she had trouble remembering things, trouble with her speech, she’d get dizzy and sometimes sick to her stomach — symptoms of a concussion or other head injury.
And yet she did her best to hide all that: “I tried to suppress it as much as possible and just do my job and pretended nothing was wrong. As a Marine we like to keep the ball rolling. We take pride in getting the job done.”
When she briefly came back home, she kept up the façade, although her mom saw through it: “She didn’t have her usual bright outlook. She kept to herself a lot.”
Before her mom could find out much more, Ashley signed up for another tour of Iraq and returned to the war 28 days after she’d come home.
This time she was assigned to a Marine unit based at Al Taqqadum. Pulled off radio operations, she was put to work on a security detail with an Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) team.
“My main job was to be a female searcher,” she said. “There’s a code of conduct over there and the Iraqi women don’t like to be touched by other men.
“Our job would be to go to sites where an IED had been detected or had already gone off. We provided security while the EOD team assessed the situation. Unfortunately during that deployment, we lost 13 Marines and I was there for almost every single one of them.”
Back home after that five-month assignment, she found herself dealing with panic attacks, severe depression, even blackouts. She said she eventually was diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury and she had severe post-traumatic stress disorder.
Even though there were good things beginning to happen in her life — she started working toward a college degree online, she married fellow Marine Pablo Chavez of Chicago and 19 months ago gave birth to their daughter, Adiranna — she still struggled.
“I thought about the friends we lost over there. I thought about the meds I had been put on and how they made me gain weight. I worried about so much,” she said quietly.
Last December she finally got moved into the Marines Wounded Warrior Battalion, a unit dedicated to helping her recover from her injuries and regain her strength.
Little did she know she soon would be doing that in quite dramatic fashion.
Track star
Although she had been physically inactive for nearly three years, she was intrigued when someone suggested she try to compete in the upcoming Warrior Games, which are put on by the United States Olympic Committee and the Department of Defense.
According to the most recent Department of Defense statistics, there now are over 43,000 combat wounded veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan. As Charlie Huebner, the head of the Paralympics program for the USOC told USA Today recently, physical activity increases self-esteem, reduces depression and lowers other medical problems. It also builds camaraderie.
The first Warrior Games were a year ago and drew 187 athletes. This year the field grew to 198. The Marines sent 49 athletes, including 22 vets and 27 active duty, among them the 25-year-old Sgt. Chavez.
Three months ago she was coaxed into trying the 100-meter dash at the Marines Warrior Games Trials at Camp Pendleton, Calif., where she and her husband are stationed. She finished third.
She then tried the shot put, which she had thrown briefly at Stebbins, and qualified in that event. And when it was announced the team needed swimmers, she signed up for the 50-meter freestyle and 50 backstroke, even though she’d never in her life swum the length of a full-sized pool. She qualified in both events.
“Getting into this was absolutely life-changing for me,” she said. “Physically and mentally — it’s really helped me put all the pieces of the puzzle together. With all the other wounded warriors around me, I realize we’ve all been through something. And that I should feel blessed to be here.”
Heroic effort
She carried a small American flag as she helped lead the Marines — who were joined by athletes from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard — into the Games’ Opening Ceremonies.
She eventually spotted her mom and her sister, Kristal Marquis, in the crowd. Both were cheering. Her mother was crying and soon so was she.
“I had tears in my eyes, but a smile on my face,” she said. “I had so much pride in my heart I thought it could burst. It was one of the best feelings I ever had in my life.”
During the six-day competition, she made the medal podium in the shot put, taking bronze. Although she would swim her personal best in the 50 backstroke, her efforts were hampered, her mom said, because of a freak injury as a spectator:
“She got hit in the head hard by a volleyball. She had to go to the medical station and at first they were going to keep her from competing any more. But she begged and pleaded and cried and eventually she convinced them she could go on. She was kind of out of it after that, but she just wouldn’t quit.”
Ashley said it has to do with finally getting her confidence back: “I might not have medaled, but I still had my personal best. It’s helped me know I can do anything now. Maybe I’m not perfect, but at least I’m out there trying. Everybody is.
“And when you watch an amputee jump off a swimming block or a double amputee running, there’s just something magical in all that.”
As for her mom, she said she, too, found magic at the Warrior Games:
“From the time Ashley was little I called her my sunshine and now that sunshine is coming back again. She’s a good mother herself now, a good wife and an inspiration out there on the athletic field. She’s really become a pretty wonderful woman.”
And she’s also given her mom the answer to those agonizing questions of long ago.
As for what would become of her girl, Suzi now knows:
“She’s not only my daughter ... she’s become my hero.”
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