One unfortunate truth of war is that many injuries come from not only enemy fire, but friendly fire or military accidents. This is the case for Samuel Decker, a Union solider in the Civil War who had both hands and part of his right forearm blown up in an explosion of his service weapon on October 8,1862. His face and chest were also burned badly, but he recovered from those injuries relatively well. The injuries to his arms, however, resulted in a double amputation of his hands (Piper).

Two years later, Decker began experimenting with how to provide for himself using prosthetics. The resulting contraptions were made of metal and leather and provided the ability to write, pick up small objects, and feed one’s self. This invention is thought to be the origin of the modern modular limb design (Park, 2015).

The American Civil War did not begin with a large, decisive battle among two well organized sides. To begin, there were small skirmishes and attempts to sabotage the other side. One such skirmish was the Battle of Philippi on June 3, 1861, just two months into the war. It ended up being among the first of the battles that resulted in amputations. Confederate soldier James E. Hanger had to have his left leg amputated above the knee after a 6-pound ball hit him. The amputation was performed by a Union surgeon and Hanger was kept as a POW until a prisoner exchange happened.

A former engineering student, Hanger was unhappy with the technology available at the time. After several unsuccessful attempts at employment, he went on to build his own artificial limb and began producing them on a large scale for fellow disabled Confederate veterans. The J.E. Hanger Company, as it was known in 1905 when Hanger retired from the company, is still around to this day. It is now know as Hanger Prosthetics and Orthotics (Gibbons Backus, 2021).

World War II saw another dramatic return of injured service members with injuries resulting in paralysis or amputation. The Norco Navy Hospital was home to many servicemen recovering from these injuries in 1947. As a rehabilitative exercise, the recovering men would play basketball in wheelchairs and ended up handedly beating the doctors who also sat in wheelchairs. Then, the idea that sports could be for disabled people too took on a life of its own. The physical effects were not the only evident benefit. The exercise was equally, if not more so, mentally beneficial. Feeling included and operative had an obvious and dramatic outcome on their states of mind. 

This was before events like the Paralympics, which started in 1948, so the idea of wheelchair sports was completely foreign. But since the 1930s, when wheelchair design enhanced to include being lightweight and maneuverable, wheelchair sports were primed to begin.

The Flying Wheels (pictured above) lobbied for disability rights in 1948 in a cross-country tour. They used their celebrity as disabled sports figures and WWII veterans to lobby for accessibility, transportation, employment, and housing rights for all. Their efforts did not end in any legislation to afford disabled people these rights, but they do stand in disabled history as some of the first to fight for disability justice.

(Davis, 2020)

Jim Martinson is a Vietnam Veteran who lost both legs when a fellow nearby service member exploded a land mine. At the time, Jim was not ready to give up on sports even though his injury seemed devastating. He developed the company Magic in Motion in the 1980s and began making adaptive sporting equipment. Most important to him was the mono-ski, a device that allows a double-leg amputee to sit on a chair attached to a single ski. He did this in order to be able to ski with his kids and to give others in his situation the freedom to hit the slopes.

(ShareAmerica, 2017)