SALT LAKE CITY — Steve Simmon endured a sickness that paralyzed his spine and ended his promising career in the Navy.
The sailor made Utah his home when he got sick after serving on board the USS Ronald Reagan in March 2011. The Reagan was the first ship to respond to the earthquake and tsunami at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan.
The incident killed nearly 19,000 people and the nuclear reactors at the plant were damaged, causing meltdowns, radiation leaks and unanswered questions for sailors like Simmon.
Despite the struggle, he said he found renewed hope in hand cycling and was among the participants who competed in this weekend's National Veterans Wheelchair Games in Salt Lake City.
Simmons main race is the 10K hand cycle race. Eighteen months ago that was unimaginable to him. He didn't have the personal drive to get out of the house, let alone get on a cycle.
The former sailor has always been competitive. He pushes himself every he straps himself into his hand cycle for a race or a training ride. "I love it,” Simmons said. "Until my body tells me I can no longer do these things, I'm going to keep doing it."
Simmons says it was a big deal for Salt Lake City to host the National Veterans Wheelchair Games. More than 500 wheelchair athletes attended and competed.
"It gives the community a chance to see,” veteran athletes pursue health lifestyles, compete with each other and share their passion for sports.
"You make friends, it's more than that you become family,” the Navy veteran said. But this kind of thrill was not on the former naval officer's radar until recently.
Finding the light
"I was in a dark place. It was pretty bad,” he said. Simmons' life had melted down. "I honestly wasn't even living at that point,” he said.
Simmons served on the USS Reagan, off the shore of Japan, as it supported recovery efforts for more than a month after the tsunami set off by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake.
Two years later, in 2013, he said, “We knew that something was going on. They didn't hide the fact that there was a radiation leak from the power plant that was melting down."
But he's not sure the Navy or any of the 5,500 on board knew of the severity. His health spiraled downward. He has the functionality of a T3 paraplegic. His wife gave him an ultimatum. He said she told him "to either get busy living or get busy dying."
A short time later, he got an email from Safe Harbor Wounded Warriors project. Within months he was competing with other veterans in adaptive sports and was hooked on hand cycling in the Warrior Games.
"(I) came back with five golds and a silver," he said.
In the military he felt the tight bonds of brotherhood. When was forced to end his military career, he lost that. Through adaptive sports he rediscovered those bonds.
"You were able to regain the camaraderie … that sense of belonging,” Simmons said.
He said when he's in competition, "it gives you an opportunity to inspire others, and maybe encourage them to dig deep and find what they may have lost at one point."
He faces physical challenges and his health issues are unresolved with the Navy.
"Every day I wake up and never know how it's going to be,” he said.
The Department of Defense does not recognize that anyone was sickened by radiation. "It's still an ongoing fight,” Simmons said.
But he is classified as disabled without acknowledgment of a cause.
"Right now no one recognizes that radiation caused anything to anyone," he said.
He said he tries not let things get him down. "The battle of radiation exposure, I don't see a resolution in sight. For me, all I can do is keep going."