Smyrna Welcomes Wounded Warrior

Sign up for the Smyrna-Vinings Patch newsletter!

---

Dozens of veterans and community members joined three Smyrna City Council members and Grammy Award-winning performer Lee Greenwood to welcome a disabled Army veteran and his wife to their mortgage-free home on Tuesday.

Spc. Chuck Fuller and his wife Ines were officially welcomed to the community with a festive ceremony featuring the Patriot Guard Riders, members of Dobbins Air Reserve Base’s 94th Airlift Wing, First Lady Sandra Deal, and council members Wade Lnenicka, Ron Fennel, and Susan Wilkinson.

Fuller was serving in Iraq in 2004 when a rocket attack on a Forward Operating Base caused part of the building to fall on his head, causing a traumatic brain injury. Undeterred, he patched himself up and carried on his mission. Over time, his legs began to go numb, and he began to experience some dizziness.

Finally, a year later, he went to the VA. Since then, the headaches and dizziness have progressed to seizures, which require Chuck to have 24 hour supervision. The leg numbness turned out to be from lower back problems. He now uses a walker or cane. He also deals with some hearing loss and PTSD. Chuck’s wife Ines is his caregiver.

The Tuesday event was also a homecoming of sorts for the president of Operation: Soldier at Ease (OSAE), the local nonprofit which spearheaded the drive to build the home; Karen Walters’ daughter Dana was born with cystic fibrosis in 1974 and passed away in 1994, but left behind a lasting legacy of courage, compassion, and strength to all who knew her.

Walters, speaking at Tuesday’s event, said that she will never get to meet her daughter’s husband or children, but she now knows where Dana would be living were she still alive today. As a permanent reminder of this sentiment, an angel pin Dana often wore was embedded into the foundation under the door of the new home.

Singer Lee Greenwood was a friend of Dana Walters, and once put her on stage with him as he sang “You Are the Wind Beneath My Wings” to her. Greenwood, as the national ambassador for the organization Helping A Hero, was excited to come to Smyrna to honor both Dana and the Fuller’s with renditions of “You Are the Wind Beneath My Wings” and “God Bless the USA.”

Building off of Greenwood’s performance, First Lady Sandra Deal said that our armed forces are the wind beneath the wings of the country, and in turn the community is the wind beneath the wings of returning veterans.

Tommy Clack, a Decatur resident who lost three limbs in Vietnam, spoke about the need for young Americans to become aware of the proper way to treat returning soldiers, so that the experiences he and his comrades had when they returned home in the 1960s and 1970s will never be repeated. Clack added that the solemn yet festive celebration was a perfect display of patriotism.

Fuller, speaking before the key was handed over by Karen Walters, said that he and his wife were blown away by the support they had received from OSAE and the Smyrna community.