Full of Heart: My Story of Survival, Strength, and Spirit

by J. R. Martinez

  But what about families whose communities didn’t or couldn’t step up like this? Every family was saddled with the extra worry of financial pressures brought on by their absence from work and home.

  I told Doug I wanted to help raise money to assist these families. I also mentioned that the Department of Defense sometimes covered only the first flight to the hospital and back. If the family member went home and then wanted to return to the hospital, the airfare often came out of their own pocket. (To be fair and accurate: Remember, I was injured at the beginning of the war, and the DoD was working to resolve many of these issues.)

  Doug agreed with all my concerns. I emphasized that I would do whatever I could, in any way, to help.

  “You’re really good at communicating,” he said. “You could be a spokesman.”

  Spokesman. I liked the way that sounded, although I didn’t really know what it meant.

  Doug tried to explain. “You’ll go out and talk to people about the organization, meet with potential donors.”

  Great idea, I thought. I can do this!

  I spoke with Doug nearly every other day for months, staying up-to-date on the proposed direction of the nonprofit, which was tentatively called the Coalition to Salute America’s Heroes. I continued to do interviews every time public affairs asked, so I felt that I was making strides with this media stuff.

  That was on the outside. On the inside, I was still the same lonely guy.

  I felt embarrassed to be seen in public with my expanders, so I tried to hide in my room when I could. Norma Guerra, the public affairs chief, noticed. It was her responsibility to keep her eye on the troops, like me, who sometimes did press for the facility. Passing me in the hallway one day, she asked, “Why are you in your room all the time?” I didn’t have an answer for her. She approached my commander. “I have a job for Martinez,” she told him. “He needs to report to my office.”

  So I did, every morning, five days a week. I’d get there at around nine and eat my breakfast at the receptionist’s desk, my new post. The phones were always ringing off the hook.

  “BAMC public affairs, Specialist Martinez,” I’d say.

  Sometimes it was a small-town newspaper reporter at the other end, requesting an interview with one of their own. Or it might be a Girl Scout troop leader in Cincinnati, asking where to send the get-well cards her girls had made. Sometimes calls came from the offices of dignitaries and high-ranking officers; sometimes it was a major media outlet.

  I helped set up tours, escorted media around BAMC, organized and distributed donations, and advised other soldiers before their press appearances. I even was issued a BAMC Public Affairs Office badge. I still spent time with patients, usually in the afternoon, in between my PAO obligations.

  Inadvertently, Norma was paving the way for my future. When reporters called our office requesting an interview with a wounded soldier, she usually recommended me for the job. The staff taught me the ropes both in front of and behind the camera. I began to feel more and more comfortable in interview situations. I learned to choose my words carefully when answering a reporter’s questions. I had a sense that people respected me for doing these interviews. Honestly, I felt like the shit. I was the dude dealing with high officials and important press. Some of the other patients started calling me “Hollywood.” (I didn’t like that then and I don’t like it now.)

  People began to call Norma my “Texas mom.” Although we differed on one crucial element—she was a San Antonio Spurs fan and I was not—she and I became very close.

  Sometimes her son, Brian, who’s my age, came over to BAMC. We liked to hang out together and later became good friends. When my mom and I attended the Daytime Emmy Awards in 2009 (I was a cast member of All My Children by then), Norma designed and sewed the dress my mom wore.

  My mom couldn’t always make it back out to San Antonio for some of my smaller surgeries, so she’d ask Norma to look in on me to make sure everything went okay. Norma would show up early in the morning before I was taken into the OR. Afterward, she would visit me in the recovery room with a peanut butter and banana sandwich and an orange Gatorade, which would ease my post-surgery nausea.

  The thing about Norma that I appreciated most was that she knew how to get me good. After one surgery, she pleaded with the doctor ahead of time to tell her which recovery room I’d be sent to. When I opened my eyes, fresh out of anesthesia, I was shocked by the sight of San Antonio Spurs insignia plastered all over the walls. The staff cracked up when the first words I uttered were, “I’ve died and gone to hell.”

  On another occasion, there was a senator scheduled to come visit BAMC. The general wanted some of us troops to meet her and show her around. Norma told each of us that the senator was a huge Spurs fan so, on the general’s orders, Norma would be supplying us all with Spurs T-shirts and hats that we were required to wear. I didn’t take kindly to this directive, but once I understood that the other guys had agreed to wear the gear, I reluctantly got on board.

  On the appointed day at the appointed time, I walked into the conference room, wearing my Spurs fan memorabilia. I was the only one. The other troops were in uniform. I looked over at Norma. She just grinned. She’d gotten me again.

  Practical jokes aside, Norma really looked out for me. In the public affairs office there was a large wall-mounted whiteboard behind my desk on which the staff would write reminders and scheduling notes. One morning during a lull, Norma sat down in a chair in front of me.

  I had decided to figure out a new way to sign my name. Someday I might be signing important papers, and I wanted to do so in style. I spent half a day signing and signing on that whiteboard, practicing my J, trying to come up with the perfect signature. Norma critiqued each idea.

  The coalition finally got off the ground and began to pursue its mission of helping troops. I was suddenly surrounded by well-spoken, educated people. I became interested in learning to communicate better, to use words that would really captivate others. I began to pay attention to the way I talked, to my grammar, to my accent.

  Doug made good on his suggestion that I serve as one of the spokesmen, and although my participation wasn’t sanctioned by BAMC, they were aware that I volunteered with the coalition.

  Doug sent me and the other volunteers to media training in the coalition’s PR offices outside Washington, D.C. They put us in a room and fired questions at us. I practiced my answers, trying to figure out how to condense my words to get out more of our message.

  My expanders were removed and another round of grafting surgery was completed in July 2004. I got lots of on-the-job training doing interviews for BAMC, and the coalition began to send me to speak for them around the country. I felt that I had a natural affinity for what I was doing, and others apparently thought so as well, as I soon was the go-to guy for interviews for the coalition. I was able to communicate the goals of the organization well, and my scars added credence to my message. I started receiving specific invitations from news personalities, such as Fox’s Neil Cavuto; I became a regular contributor on his show, Your World with Neil Cavuto.

  In late summer the coalition execs began to plan their first annual retreat in Florida for wounded troops and their families and were casting about for the event’s entertainment. They had some names but no real leads. When someone donated some tickets to a few BAMC troops for the Toby Keith concert in August in San Antonio, and I was lucky enough to get one, it occurred to me that the singer would be the perfect person to perform at our event.

  Doug said, “Do your best.”

  A guy named Dan Vargas, an airman from Randolph Air Force Base, frequently volunteered to accompany wounded troops to events in town, and he escorted our group to the venue. Dan is a big teddy bear of a guy, about twenty years older than me.

  On the drive over to the event, I told Dan about my Toby Keith idea.

  “Go for it,” he said.

  At the concert, the other wounded troops and I had a little meet-and-greet with T
oby and his band. I gave my elevator pitch about the coalition to Toby and then spoke to one of his handlers.

  A week or two later, the band’s management was in negotiations with the coalition. In December, Toby Keith performed at our event in Florida.

  Deborah Norville, the broadcaster from my hometown, had heard my story in September and invited me to appear on her show. A limo picked me up at LaGuardia Airport in New York and took me to my room at the Hilton on Sixth Avenue. I’d never been in such a beautiful hotel. My room was on a high floor with windows overlooking midtown Manhattan. I immediately ducked out to explore the city. That evening a stretch limo picked me up and transported me to the studios on West Fifty-Seventh Street for my interview.

  I loved New York—the energy, the important events going on in that city, the powerful people. I wondered how it felt to live there. I could barely contain myself.

  I called Norma back in San Antonio to brag. “Guess where I am? New York City!”

  “What?” she yelled. “You’re not supposed to be that far away from this hospital!”

  I was active duty, and soldiers need permission from their command to travel beyond a fifty-mile radius of their duty station. I was about seven hundred miles over that limit.

  “You’d better get back here fast,” she warned me, “before people start looking for you.”

  When I returned, someone indeed had been looking for me—the hospital’s commanding general. I was summoned to his office, escorted over from Fisher House by my captain on one side of me, a sergeant major on the other, and a sergeant behind me. I looked like a prisoner being walked to the electric chair, although I wasn’t really worried.

  “I flip on the TV and I see you talking about the coalition,” the general said, as I stood at attention in front of his desk. “I thought we had all discussed this.”

  I was a specialist and he was a general, but I knew he liked me, and in my mind, we were buds. I was absurdly cocky.

  “Yes, sir,” I returned. “But I’m not asking people for money. I’m just talking about the organization. People can make up their own minds. We’re living this—at my home there’s bills and my mom has bad credit now.”

  He told me that he understood what I was trying to do but that I was walking a very fine line—that I needed to be careful and speak to the public affairs office any time I had an opportunity to represent the coalition. I didn’t listen. I believed in what I was doing and why I was doing it, and I vowed to do anything the coalition asked.

  And they asked a lot. Several times a month beginning in the fall of 2004, a black town car would pull up curbside to the hospital. I’d emerge from my room, trailing a small suitcase containing my suit.

  “Mr. Martinez?” the driver would ask.

  “That’s me,” I’d say, hopping into the back, aware of the eyes on me.

  The car would speed down I-35, depositing me at the San Antonio airport, where I’d take a flight to New York for some sort of press event or to D.C. to meet with the coalition’s media team or executives. And to think I’d never even owned a suit before.

  Back in high school, the football team wore slacks, a tie, and a sport coat on game days. When I enlisted, my dress uniform became my suit. But I needed to look sharp to represent the coalition, and the administrators told me to purchase some clothes on their dime, so my mom and I went to a Men’s Wearhouse in Chattanooga and I chose a few suits.

  I felt good when I put them on. I almost felt like I didn’t have any scars. Sometimes I even forgot I had them. I’d think about the suit and the reason I was wearing it. It made me feel powerful. Maybe I wasn’t 100 percent confident about my face and body, but I was doing so well in other ways that it offset the looks. It was cool to be going to a lunch meeting with grown-ass men who had been doing this stuff for a lot longer than me.

  People told me I should run for office. Yup, they really did. I was a twenty-one-year-old kid.

  And I was the big man on campus again.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Getting Back on the Bike

  In the spring of 2005 I got word that I was going to be moved from the Fisher House to the barracks next to the hospital. I was relieved to learn I’d have a single room. I wasn’t yet comfortable living with people with other types of injuries and baring my scars for all eyes to see.

  In the meantime, I continued to hone my speaking skills. In addition to volunteering with the coalition, I sometimes answered requests to tell my story before church groups or other audiences.

  And then it was time for me to begin the Army Medical Evaluation Board process. When a disabled soldier goes before the board, his or her medical evidence is researched so that a disability rating can be assigned. The evaluation usually takes about nine months to complete. The Army had started asking me to begin the process about seven months after my injury occurred.

  No, I kept telling them. There was no way I was getting out of the Army and potentially sacrificing the care I needed.

  But now I felt ready. The board took photos of all my injuries and scars and questioned me about my current abilities. I was concerned that I’d be assigned a low rating, which I’d have to appeal. I needn’t have worried: I was satisfied with the board’s decision.

  While I was waiting for my percentage to be calculated, I needed something to fill my time. I’d made friends with a couple of other burn-unit patients, so now I had people my own age to hang out with. One day I was driving around town with my friend R.C., who had been burned in Iraq and had lost an eye and some fingers. I saw a store on the side of the road that advertised quads and minibikes.

  “R.C., pull over!”

  We went inside the store, spoke to the salesman for a while and, before you know it, we had each plunked down $600 for our own minibikes. Never mind that a special permit was required to drive them.

  We brought those minibikes back to Fort Sam Houston and laughed ourselves silly driving them at top speeds around the base. We’d fly around the corner by the medical center, competing to see which of us could get to the highest speeds. More than once, the military police came after us, but we usually managed to evade them by hiding behind Dumpsters or parked cars.

  R.C. and I, along with a kid named Archie and a nineteen-year-old from El Paso named Sam, were together a lot, both on base and off. We shared an interest in customized cars. I still had my gold Maxima, R.C. got a black Ford Ranger, Archie had a black Nissan Xterra, and once Sam had saved up his money, he bought a Toyota Celica.

  The four of us went to car shows together. Sometimes we’d drive all the way to Dallas, nearly three hundred miles away, for one. We poked around auto supply stores looking for speakers and other cool gear for the cars. We shopped online together, too. We surrounded ourselves with the world of custom cars.

  One day I was driving around and pulled into a car shop advertising: “Our specialty is air suspension.” I thought that sounded cool, and it was. Even better: The shop hosted a car club for guys like us.

  I started hanging out at that shop nearly every day. Before too long, I’d painted and gutted my Nissan and installed two televisions in it.

  I became tight with a guy named Jason, a civilian who hung out at the shop. I was pleased to have a friend outside of the military. On weekends, we’d go cruising downtown. We’d drive down Commerce Street, past the bars and restaurants and over to a section called Market Square, and then back up a street called Market. For hours and hours. We’d be at a traffic light and hear a dude pull up next to us, our car vibrating from the thump of his speakers. It was like Battle of the Bands.

  After we got tired of that, we’d get something to eat and go home—back to BAMC—to our beds. Sometimes we’d go to Hooters, but that was about as racy as it got. None of these guys did drugs or drank a whole lot. It was good, clean fun.

  You’d think my body had been through enough, but in 2005 I decided to get the first of two tattoos. I was hanging out with R.C., bored, when he decided he’d get a tattoo to
honor some of the guys he’d served with who’d lost their lives. The two of us went to a tattoo place, and while we were there, I decided to get one, too. In truth, I’d always wanted one that acknowledges the love between me, my mother, and my two sisters. The artist drew up a design and inked it onto my right calf. It’s a flower, a cross, and a heart intertwined, with all of our names: Maria, Consuelo, Anabel, and J.R.

  The tattoo you’ve more likely seen on me is the watch on my left wrist. I got it in 2008, when I’d just turned twenty-five. I’d gone skydiving for my birthday, but I wanted to mark my quarter century in a more permanent way.

  During my first days at Fort Campbell, one of my sergeants would ask me for the time. I could never remember military time, which operates off a twenty-four-hour clock. So I’d answer “two o’clock” instead of “fourteen hundred,” or whatever, and I’d get smoked for it. As soon as I could afford it I bought an inexpensive Army watch so I wouldn’t get stuck anymore.

  The day I was hurt, I was wearing that watch. My entire hand and arm was burned except for the wrist beneath the watch.

  My tattoo’s watch face is zigzagged, signifying that it is broken. The hands read two thirty, which is the time I was injured. And the date of the explosion is written in roman numerals on the band.

  On my way to the tattoo parlor I called my mom. “Hey, I’m getting another tattoo,” I told her. “And by the way, out of curiosity, what time of day was I born?”

  “It was two thirty in the afternoon,” she told me.

  I was born and reborn at the same time.

  As optimistic as I felt most days, and as much as I tried to lead a “normal” life, the concern about whether I’d ever find a mate who would love me the way I was now was never far from my mind. Sometimes the boys and I went out to clubs to go dancing. Girls would talk to me, be sociable, but their friendliness never extended to personal interest. It was pretty painful.