November | December 2018

Living With Limb Loss | Family Matters | Honor, Valor, Sacrifice | Health & Well-Being | Technology | Perspectives

Finding Forged by Fire

Answers handsmart:
Breaking Down
Barriers
Avoid the
Holiday Trap

A free publication produced by the Amputee Coalition

 Forged by
FIRE by Caleb Brewster

The Honor Medal with Crossed Palms is

awarded to those using extraordinary skill
or resourcefulness in saving or attempting
November
26 life at extreme
to save risk to self. | December 2018
The Honor Medal with Crossed Palms is awarded only
to Scouts and Scoutmasters for outstanding acts that
demonstrate unusual heroism, skill or bravery and reflect
Scouting ideals. That kind of courage often comes at a
high price. George Oldroyd’s valor cost him dearly. Gravely
injured after fighting a dangerous fire single-handedly, his
wounds became infected, and he ultimately lost his left leg
below the knee and part of his right foot.
How did this tragic bill come due? He encountered a
pickup truck with its engine compartment burning.
Before he was done using 11 extinguishers to hold back
the flames (some his own, others scrounged from trunks
by onlookers inspired by his courage), he unwittingly
found himself standing in his own blood.
Given his complicated array of health issues, Oldroyd
is the last guy who should be running into harm’s way.
With an unusually severe primary immune disorder,
he relies entirely on the generosity of plasma donors to
replace the immunoglobulins his body doesn’t make
naturally. Any infection is a potential death sentence.
Yet, he ran toward the fire anyway.
He has a rare variety of a pituitary gigantism, with bones
lacking the mineral density necessary to make running
safe. Given what he calls his “adversarial relationship
with gravity,” the 6’8”, 350-pound Eagle Scout shattered
the long bones of his size 16 EEEEEE feet.
Yet, he ran toward the fire anyway.
George Oldroyd and Nat Mitkowski
In 2006, he broke his back in a savage car wreck. Unable
to feel his lower legs, he learned to walk again by using
osteoarthritis braces and feeling the pressure in his
knees. He couldn’t even feel his injuries while he fought
against the intense heat.
Yet, he ran toward the fire anyway.
Arriving at the driver’s door, he discovered that the
truck’s cab was carrying a dozen bottles of propane and
gallons of kerosene, with a box of roofing nails on top.
If the fire reached the cab, those supplies would make
an inadvertent bomb.
Yet, he didn’t run from the fire.
What makes a disabled man stride headlong into a
situation that promises only danger? Traditions. Traditions
like duty, honor and loyalty are the foundation of his
worldview. Once the youngest commissioned Scoutmaster
in America, Oldroyd is a firefighter’s son and grew up
around firehouses. Today he not only holds the Scouting
movement’s top award for valor, he may be the most-
decorated Scout lifesaver in its history. Before fighting that
fire, he had already been decorated for fighting several
others, receiving three Certificates of Merit, the Heroism
Award, and another Honor Medal.
He’s every bit the firefighter’s son, and yet, when
Scouting magazine reported on his remarkable record,
he responded, “Fake news! I was just hoping someone
brought marshmallows!”
Finding Answers 27

I want Scouts to see that I didn’t give
up, not on myself and not on them.
Every day I strap these braces on and
push these contractures back towards
zero, it hurts. It’s hard work and it’s
painful. But I think about camp,
about the living I’ll do once I get
back on my foot again.
That’s the George Oldroyd over 2,000 boys have known
over 25 years of Scoutmastership: good-natured,
good‑humored, but behind the mischievous smirk,
intense, mad determination. That’s how he says he
survived his harrowing ordeal: “The wound care staff
did everything they could – IV antibiotics three times a
day, hyperbaric oxygen – but nothing was slowing down
the infection. One morning, I woke up so sick that my
wife practically had to carry me to the car.”
In renal failure, it took 10 days of dialysis before he was
stable enough for them to amputate his leg below the
knee. Further setbacks in his physical therapy cost him
25 degrees of range of motion in both legs, and a piece
of his remaining foot. He now spends most of each day
28 November | December 2018
wearing spring-loaded braces, trying to slowly coax his
knees back into proper alignment, but the maddeningly
slow process hasn’t discouraged him from learning how
to walk for the third time in his life.
Where did he achieve the balanced, thoughtful
sensibility that allowed him to take it in stride?
Argument. While he was leading his first Scout troop,
he was also president of Sacred Heart University’s
Debate Society, earning a reputation as such a fierce
competitor that he was one of the first four Americans
chosen to represent the U.S. at the inaugural World
Masters Championship.
“Among other things, it taught me not to be a big
believer in coincidences,” he says. “I’m alive, and after
everything else, that can’t possibly be an accident. It has
to be for a purpose.” Between countless campfires and
a thousand more arguments with the most promising
young people in the world, the big man has become
adept at telling a story.
In fact, on the very day he was injured – 25 years to the
day after he was commissioned to lead Troop 63 – he
told his friends on Facebook about his plans to write a
book: Being Prepared. It was meant to be about his boys
and what Scouting meant to them as they adventured
their way through their lives, making a strong argument
in favor of Scouting as a way of life.
Then he logged off Facebook, and, heading to the
hospital for his weekly infusion, he embarked instead
on an adventure of his own that underscores the point
his book will make, and the point his conduct has made
repeatedly: that Scouting can empower any young
person to do worthy and amazing things.
It’s been two years since Oldroyd lost his leg, but
he won’t accept the two Honor Medals until he can
stand up and walk on stage. One might be forgiven for
thinking his reluctance has more to do with vanity, but
his reasons are predictably calculated.
“I want Scouts to see that I didn’t give up, not on myself
and not on them. Every day I strap these braces on and
push these contractures back towards zero, it hurts.
It’s hard work and it’s painful. But I think about camp,
about the living I’ll do once I get back on my foot again.
Feet? Foot?” As usual, he’s joking, even in the midst of
There are only two ways to survive
amputations. The first is, laugh. Find
any excuse you can to laugh. Laugh
at anything. Laugh at everything.
Laugh at nothing at all. Don’t
apologize, just laugh.
 make life an even more dashing and bolder adventure,
if you’ll only let it.”
In describing Oldroyd’s character, one of his Eagle
Scouts, his younger brother Sean, says, “This guy paid
his way through school working as a bar bouncer and
spent his free weekends, in between campouts, debating
the smartest kids in the world, and actually winning.
There’s no use fighting him, and there’s no use arguing
with him. If he says he’s going to walk, it’s because he
thought it through and made a choice. Play it smart and
get out of his way.”
Clearly, Oldroyd has never let his dysfunctional body
break his iron will to not just survive, but to be of
meaningful service to his fellow man – to use his
confiding that he is spending months on end in pain, charismatic gifts to persuade them of life’s possibilities,
all day, every day. even in the face of its defeats.
He’s less jovial as he confesses that the pain is a small And he’s not just talking about service: Just before
price to pay to relieve the burden on his wife. Two publication, he went back to Facebook and announced
years is a long time, he says, to put the burden of life’s his plans to start a Venturing Crew for teenaged
labors on your spouse. His stare grows a bit distant. As amputees, giving them a Scoutmaster that understands
the muscles in his jaw flex slightly, he quietly declares, them and what they’re feeling after limb loss. And
“Rebecca deserves a break. The heavy lifting I have to he’s offering to help anyone, anywhere, start one in
do to walk again is basically nothing.” their city. In time, there will be Scouting for amputees
If his sense of duty, honor and loyalty are good enough dotting the map.
for strangers, he’ll surely show them to his wife. Even
his recovery is about others. Even unable to walk, he
stands for all of the best ideals one can hope for.
When asked what advice he could offer a new amputee,
Oldroyd has a couple of answers. Already a living
example of the principle that holds a Scout is brave, he
puts the same stock in another – that a Scout is cheerful:
“There are only two ways to survive amputations. The
first is, laugh. Find any excuse you can to laugh. Laugh
at anything. Laugh at everything. Laugh at nothing at
all. Don’t apologize, just laugh.
“I joined amputee groups online, and they are terrific
company: a bunch of dismembered people who know
every amputee joke there is, and love them. They
showed me how to accept this ‘radical weight loss
program’ and laugh right in the face of all the pain
and sorrow of it.
“Laugh about all of it, because if you don’t, you give too
much power to the horror. There’s more than enough
of that. No one experiences this without pondering the
horror of it. But once you get in the habit of laughing,
and it will come easily in no time, take … the laughter
to other amputees: Be that person that the new
amputee really needs to meet – that’s the second tip for
For more information on
survival. There are people in every community … who Venturing Crew, follow:
believe a key part of their reason for existing is to show
every new amputee the best-kept secrets of limb loss: facebook.com/georgeoldroyd
It’s actually going to make you a better person, and

Finding Answers 29