Nebraskaland

August-September 2019 • Nebraskaland 43 bomb exploded, it tore through his left arm and caused profuse bleeding. "The guys that saw it happen said it blew us up 20 feet in the air and off road," Folkerts said. Emergency surgery in a Baghdad hospital included grafting a vein from his leg to save his arm. More surgeries followed at a hospital in Germany after which he was fl own to Walter Reed. He would spend more time in recovery than he did doing his job on active duty. "I was very fortunate, one, that I didn't die, but two, that I got to save the arm also," Folkerts said. For the next three years, he was back and forth between Walter Reed, where he ran into the folks from Project Healing Waters, and Fort Riley, which was close enough that he could go home on weekends. There are pictures of Folkerts as a child fi shing on Beaver Creek, "a little muddy creek that went through my dad's cow pasture. I spent many days as a young boy down there with my cane pole and a bobber and worms fi shing for bullheads," Folkerts said. Fly-fi shing, on the other hand, was a foreign concept to Folkerts. Asked to try it at Walter Reed, he initially declined, thinking it looked too complicated. "My left hand was mostly paralyzed at the time and I was afraid to try it and fail and just be more depressed about my situation," he said. His friends persisted and he eventually did try it, and quickly learned that his left hand functioned well enough to strip and retrieve line while he cast with his right. Soon he went to New York, where he caught his fi rst brook trout on an outing hosted by the fl y-fi shing club at West Point. "I pulled it out of the water and took a look at it and saw how beautiful it was. I was like. 'Wow, this is pretty dang cool.' I was pretty much hooked there," he said. From there he went to every meeting he could, and signed up for a fi ve-day fl oat trip on the Snake River in Montana. "Just being out in the wilderness and being on that trip with six or eight other disabled vets was pretty amazing," Folkerts said. "It was an incredibly healing experience for me. When I came back, I just wanted to spread that. I appreciated what the program had given to me and I wanted to start giving back." So he started volunteering with Project Healing Waters, helping others at Walter Reed learn what he now calls "the proper way to fi sh." Having been wounded in battle gave him "instant credibility" with the soldiers he was helping, and when he medically retired from the Army in 2008, he became the organization's second full-time employee, taking on the job of starting new programs. Now the national programs offi cer, Folkerts is in charge of training volunteers across the country, organizing destination outings for the vets, rod- building, fl y tying and casting competitions, and other tasks. What he likes most about the organization is not the fi shing, but the "magic" of the relationships veterans build through ongoing activities held at least once a month. "When you get veterans together in a social setting, it David Landon of Omaha, an Army veteran from Omaha, fishes the Big Hole River in Montana on a trip to the Freedom Ranch for Heroes provided by Project Healing Waters. The trip and program have been life changing for Landon, who suffers from PTSD.

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