Vietnam vet to go hunting with all-terrain wheelchair

Legion post helps legless Vietnam vet to go hunting with all-terrain wheelchair
Indystar
Bill McCleery, Indianapolis
March 5, 2014

Vietnam veteran Jesus Quintana loves to hunt, but crossing fields and forests is not easy for the Eastside Indianapolis double amputee.

Each year, he typically is driven a few times to his favorite spots, such as areas around Camp Atterbury in Johnson County, then helped to a hunting blind.

The wheelchair the 65-year-old retired Marine uses does not maneuver well over ruts, rocks, mud or thick vegetation.

Next month, however, Quintana plans to hunt turkey for the first time, and he will have a new means of getting around: a $12,000 all-terrain wheelchair donated this week by American Legion Post 182 in New Palestine.

The chair has a higher clearance than a typical wheelchair and uses tanklike treads rather than wheels.

"I am very grateful," Quintana said Wednesday. "Beyond helping me hunt, it's going to be a big help with a lot of everyday things. Just on my own property, I've wanted to go out there and repair a fence some dogs tore up. But I haven't really been able to get to it. I think I can get out there with this thing."

He and his wife, Betty, live near 21st Street and Emerson Avenue.

"I'm looking forward to taking it around my neighborhood on warm summer nights and smoking a little cigar," he said. "I don't like to smoke in the house."

Quintana lost his legs in an explosion during an Aug. 29, 1968, combat mission. Quintana and his unit had marched into a rice paddy near the Ho Chi Minh trail when an artillery shell exploded.
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