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Service to country has price for former hoops
star
By STEPHEN MANNING
Associated Press Writer
Published July 4, 2004
WASHINGTON � Danielle Green
was a slasher, the kind of player who would blow by opponents with a quick
first step and a few hard dribbles with her dominant left hand.
``She'd kind of glide on the
court,'' remembers Julie Henderson, a teammate at Notre Dame.
But when her college
basketball career ended, she tried out for the WNBA's Detroit Shock and
didn't make the final cut. She taught for a while at a Chicago charter
school, coached a bit, then decided: ``I had to do something different with
my life. It was boring, it wasn't going anywhere.''
So she joined the Army, and
the Army sent her to Iraq.
On May 25, Green was sitting
behind a stack of sandbags in Baghdad when a rocket-propelled grenade round
whooshed past her head. She grabbed her M-16, whirled around to return fire
and was knocked off her feet by another round exploding nearby.
As she lay twisted behind the
sandbag wall, she could see blood flowing from her leg. She couldn't feel
her left arm. She thought she might be dying.
``I said, 'Oh God, I'm only 27
years old. I haven't done enough in life yet,''' she recalled.
Four fellow soldiers lifted
her from the roof. It wasn't until a few hours later that she allowed
herself to cry. But she quickly composed herself, determined to stay calm.
She called Willie Byrd, her
husband of barely a month, in Chicago.
``I want you to be strong,''
she said. ``I'm alive, but I've lost my left hand.''
Today, Green sits in front of
a computer screen at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, two thin wires hooked
near the smooth stump below her elbow, where her left arm now ends. She
flexes her remaining muscles, practicing motions that will help her use her
new prosthetic hand and wrist.
She practices everyday tasks
like writing with her right hand during therapy and learns how to use what
remains of her left arm. She wears her wedding and engagement rings,
recovered by fellow soldiers from her severed hand, on her right ring
finger.
``I used to dribble only a
little bit with my right hand,'' she says. ``I called my coach recently and
said, 'All those years you told me to use my right, well, now I have to.'''
That she should have a
basketball player's mentality in dealing with her injury is not surprising.
For her, basketball has always been more than a game.
It was a way to escape a tough
childhood on Chicago's South Side. Green realized early that a basketball
scholarship was a way out. By the time she was a Roosevelt High School
senior, the 5-foot-7 Green averaged 27 points per game and made the
All-America team.
She was always a devoted Notre
Dame football fan; early on, she set her sights on the university, and her
work on the court finally paid off with an offer to play for the Irish.
She played on teams that went
to the round of 16 in the NCAA tournament three times. At guard and small
forward, she averaged 9.5 points and 4.5 rebounds per game in 2000, her last
year. Her teammates called her ``D. Smooth.'' All told, she scored more than
1,000 points.
Even her marriage had ties to
the sport. She met Byrd, 58, in 1993 while a junior in high school. He was a
coach at a rival school, and Green was among the players he took to a summer
camp. Years later, after she graduated from college and worked with him as a
coach, they became romantically involved.
Coaching, though, was not
enough for Green.
``I always had a soft spot in
my heart for the Army,'' she says, and had served in the junior ROTC while
in high school, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel. In October 2002,
she enlisted in the real Army.
In Iraq, she served with the
571st Military Police Company. Much of the military police work she did,
like escorting high-ranking officers, wasn't exciting.
In April, while home on leave,
she married Byrd in Las Vegas. Then she returned to Baghdad, where her unit
was assigned to protect police stations, favorite targets of insurgent
fighters, after an outbreak of heavy fighting in the spring in Fallujah.
She was sitting on the roof of
a police station on May 25 when the rocket fire began.
Green arrived at Walter Reed
on May 29. Two days later, Byrd came in from Chicago and found his wife
smiling broadly, less than a week after she was injured.
Doctors have performed six
surgeries on her arm, shaving down the bone and grafting skin to form the
stump. A long scar creeps across her thigh where shrapnel raked across her
skin. A small wound on her cheek is healing.
She'll likely be at Walter
Reed for several more weeks as she learns how to use her prosthetic hand.
Using electric nodes attached to her arm, the hand will allow her to grasp
objects and perform other basic tasks.
Her occupational therapist,
Capt. Katie Yancosek, has researched an attachment that could allow Green to
hold a basketball and shoot but not dribble with her left hand.
But basketball is no longer a
priority. Green doesn't plan to continue coaching; nor can she see herself
playing competitively again. Ultimately, basketball was a means to an end
for Green, a way to get an education. She doesn't think she'll miss it too
much.
Green has been granted a
medical retirement and plans to return with Byrd to Chicago. She hopes to go
to graduate school to earn a degree in school counseling.
Green and Byrd don't expect
her injury will dramatically change their everyday lives. With her
prosthetic, she will be able to pick up objects, move her wrist, and even
drive a car. She'll stay active, learn to play other sports, like tennis and
golf, without that left hand that handled the basketball so well.
She does wonder how people
will react when they see the stump.
``You want things to be the
same,'' she said, ``but you don't know if people will look at you
differently.''
Copyright 2004
The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be
published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
02/23/2007 10:41:15 AM
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