Quadruple amputee Staff Sgt. Travis Mills gets hero's welome home

Soldier who lost 4 limbs back in Michigan hometown
By MIKE HOUSEHOLDER
10/5/2012

VASSAR, Mich. — Army Staff Sgt. Travis Mills had been a lot of places since losing his four limbs in Afghanistan. The one place he hadn't been was where people knew him best.

He finally returned to his Michigan hometown this week — six months after the explosion that cost him his arms and legs — to serve as the grand marshal of his old high school's homecoming parade.

"I didn't come to Vassar yet, because I wasn't ready for people to see me without my legs. ... Because in Vassar, everybody knows everybody," Mills said in an interview hours before the parade Thursday. "Great town, but I just wasn't comfortable with them seeing me in a wheelchair."

Mills is still undergoing rehabilitation at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C. But he's been able to get out and about. In the past few weeks alone, he took part in a 5K benefit walk in New York and celebrated his daughter's first birthday on the base at Fort Bragg, N.C.

His hometown has pulled for him from afar. Hair salons, American Legion posts and many others hosted fundraisers this spring and summer as the small, tight-knit community rallied around him.

Hundreds of people waving American flags jammed into Vassar's downtown to catch a glimpse of Mills at the parade Thursday evening. Mills, his wife, Kelsey, and their 1-year-old daughter, Chloe, served as the grand marshals.
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Soldier who lost 4 limbs in Afghanistan returns home to hero's welcome

The Associated Press reports from Vassar, Mich.

Army Staff Sgt. Travis Mills had been a lot of places since losing his four limbs in Afghanistan. The one place he hadn't been was where people knew him best.

He finally returned to his Michigan hometown this week — six months after the explosion that cost him his arms and legs — to serve as the grand marshal of his old high school's homecoming parade.

"This is my new normal, and it's all about how I adjust to it," he said moments after using his prosthetic legs to walk from the living room to the sun room at his childhood home. "There's no good that's gonna come from me sitting there and wondering, 'Why'd this happen? Why me? Now what do I do?' The answer's right in front of you: It happened because it happened."

Carlos Osorio / AP Travis Mills rides in the back of a Jeep during the homecoming parade on Thursday, Oct. 4. Mills, his wife, Kelsey, and their 1-year-old daughter, Chloe, were the grand marshals of Vassar High School's homecoming parade.

Staff Sgt. Travis Mills fights to recover