Toms River Wounded Warrior To Be Guest At State Of Union Address

BETHESDA, MD -- Tyler McGibbon doesn’t remember the accident.

“We were in Kuwait, on the Iraqi border,” he says. “We were heading up to Iraq to do the last day of training of Iraqi troops, troops that are fighting now.”

“They told me the Humvee hit sand and rolled over.”

Army Spc. McGibbon, a Toms River native, was thrown from the Humvee and suffered multiple skull fractures and other injuries in that Dec. 21, 2014 accident. It left him in a coma for three months, his father, George McGibbon said.

But a little over a year after the accident, Spc. McGibbon is walking and talking again -- and well enough to be a special guest at Tuesday evening’s joint session of Congress when President Obama gives his final State of the Union address.

McGibbon will be there as a guest of U.S. Rep. Darin LaHood (R) from Illinois, George McGibbon said by phone from his son’s room at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where Spc. McGibbon continues to receive a variety of therapies every day -- physical, occupational, speech, art and music and more -- to help him recover from the traumatic brain injury he suffered that December day.

McGibbon, a 2013 graduate of Toms River High School East, served with the 2nd Battalion, 34th Armor Regiment based at Fort Riley, Kansas, as a cavalry scout.

“We do reconnaissance,” he explained. The day before a mission, cavalry scouts go in and plan the route that will be taken, setting up observation posts around a town or a route to watch and ”keep our eyes on the village, to spot things that are high interest.”

Part of his job was flying Raven B system, a small unmanned aircraft system that aided in the reconnaissance.

“We protect the protectors,” he said.

“Not being able to do all that, it’s very difficult,” he said. “I loved doing all that stuff. It was my dream since I was 8 years old.”

As a child, McGibbon watched along with the rest of the world as the United States was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001. The events of that day shaped his career choice immediately, he said.

He joined the Future Soldier program while he was still in high school, and enlisted in the Army right after graduation in 2013.

“I always felt that I care for people and I care about their protection,” McGibbon said, and serving in the Army enabled him to protect people in a larger way.

It’s unclear whether he will be able to return to that role.

“I don’t know yet,” he said. ”I’m just focusing on my therapy, trying to get physically and mentally better so I’m capable of doing more jobs.”

“I’m alive,” he said.

Alive and awake -- and being conscious in itself is a tremendous hurdle cleared, his father said.

“He’s come a long way,” George McGibbon said, from the three-month coma. “Only 10 percent of those who have his injury wake up. We’re much more lucky than most.”

Tyler McGibbon was treated initially in Kuwait -- surgery was performed to remove a large hematoma and to stop bleeding and swelling in his brain. He was then flown to Germany, where he had more surgery.

“We spent Christmas (2014) in Germany,” his dad said. Then Tyler, still comatose, was flown to Andrews Air Force Base in the U.S., where he landed New Year’s Day 2015, for treatment in the Re-emerging Consciousness program at Walter Reed, George McGibbon said. He also spent some time at McGuire VA Medical Center in Richmond, Va., before returning to Walter Reed.

“They did their job. They woke him up,” he said. It was another six or seven weeks before Tyler spoke, his father said, but when he did, “It was amazing.”

“He said hello,” George McGibbon said. “Of course we all cried.” They started wheeling him around the hospital in a wheelchair he said, and Tyler “started reading all the signs in the medical center.”

That was huge, he said, because it meant that Tyler hadn’t suffered severe brain damage.

“Cognitively he was there,” George McGibbon said. “You never know what you’re going to get with these situations.”

Tyler McGibbon has had to learn how to do all the basic things that most of us take for granted all over again -- how to walk, how to eat, and much more. And the return to consciousness has had its share of ups and downs.

“When you’re coming out of a coma there’s eight different phases,” George McGibbon said, each with their own quirks. The fourth phase is characterized by a lot of anger and irritability.

“We had to tie him down for eight days,” he said. “The fourth phase was insane.” But thankfully, he said, it was short-lived and he moved on to the next phase.

“You’re actually happy that it’s happening (the anger and irritability), because it means he’s getting better” he said, but it was still challenging.

George McGibbon, who lives on the base in Tranquility Hall, is Tyler’s nonmedical attendant, working for the Army in that role, while his wife, Donna, spends her weeks working at Macy’s at Ocean County Mall and commutes to Bethesda to be with George and Tyler on the weekends.

George had been the general manager at Captain Hook’s in Seaside Heights but was left without that job in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. As Donna’s job provides their health coverage, it made more sense for him to be with Tyler full-time, he said. The couple also has an older son, Justin, 24, who started a GoFundMe campaign not long after his brother was injured to help cover expenses of altering the family’s home to help care for Tyler.

Tyler, who turned 21 last August, has roughly another year of therapy, after which George McGibbon said, they hope to return to Toms River. They were home in May -- “there was a huge reception for him, a mile and a half long on Route 37,” George said -- and home again for a bit over the Christmas holidays.

“I take back everything I’ve said about New Jersey,” George, a lifelong Toms River resident, said with a laugh. “I can’t wait to get back.”

For now, however, they are focused on the details of Tyler’s trip to the State of the Union address. George McGibbon said outings such as these are part of Tyler’s participation in the Warrior Transition Brigade, which aims to help injured soldiers rehabilitate and find work once they are well enough to work. There is an executive event coordinator who contacts the wounded soldiers and arranges for them to participate in various events, he said.

“Elizabeth Dole was here a few weeks ago and we had lunch with her,” he said. “There’s a lot of people involved with helping warriors, at least there is here.”

While Tyler will be in the gallery at the State of the Union address, George McGibbon said he will be watching via television in LaHood’s office. He expects that it will be an amazing experience regardless.

“We’re very proud that he’s in a position to do this,” George McGibbon said.

(Photos provided by George McGibbon show the arrival of the flight carrying Tyler from Germany at Andrews Air Force Base on Jan.1, 2015; Tyler McGibbon with Gary Sinise, who played the character Lt. Dan in “Forrest Gump” and has a foundation dedicated to helping wounded warriors; Tyler at the Veterans Day wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery in November; and at the White House Christmas tour. Tyler, in a photo posted by his brother on the GoFundMe page, is seen shortly after his tour in Iraq began in 2014.)