HOUSTON -- A Houston veteran who has been in a wheelchair since 1983, took his first steps in 27 years Tuesday night.
"No easy steps. Only hard steps," Harry Shaw said of his life after the Grenada invasion. It is a conflict most have forgotten, but it changed Shaw's life forever.
“I was the most serious out of all of the injured in Grenada," Shaw said.
He lost both legs. Shaw accepted his fate of life in a wheelchair with courage and grace.
"I'm a paratrooper. That's just the way I am. The world is a drop zone and that is all I see," Shaw said as he wheeled into the Amputee and Prosthetic Center on FM 1960 Tuesday.
His life was about to take another dramatic turn.
Ben Falls, chief prosthestician at APC, and his team had built new legs for Shaw. For them, it became a labor of love.
“It is important to me that we do this right," Falls said.
After Shaw was fitted, he was ready to take the new legs for a test drive.
'It is a lot like jumping out of a plane. You just have to have the courage and the faith. Paratroopers know a lot about faith," said Shaw.
Shaw's wife, Ginny, held her breath as she watched him stand up from the wheelchair and take a few steps.
"I've never seen him upright, never seen him standing. Very strange to see him my height," Ginny said.
Shaw’s daughter, Chloe, was looking toward the future.
"The first thing that crossed my mind is that he would be able to walk me down the aisle one day," Chloe said.
Some work is just about pay. There's more when your job is providing hope.
"The payoff for me is what we did for that man. You know," said Falls. Motivation comes from all sorts of places. Falls has only to look down at his own prosthetic limb.
"This is basically what Mr. Shaw has. It is a microprocessor-controlled knee," Falls said.
"It is hard to grasp it. It is even hard to fully comprehend it now," Shaw said. But he too was already looking ahead to a future full of promise.
"Ginny wants her first dance. I've never given her that," Shaw said. "I'm good at hard steps. I'm good at challenges.”
In fact, Shaw only made the decision to get the $100,000 legs after he was told he could not jump at an amputee skydiving event.
His stumps were too short.
“My biggest motivator is when somebody tells me it can't be done," Shaw said.
