We first met Joe Dan Worley 20 years ago, along with his mother, wife Angel, and a three-month-old daughter, at Walter Reed Hospital outside Washington.
A medic rushing to the aid of wounded Marines in Iraq, Worley was hit by a roadside bomb – his left leg blown off, his right riddled with bullets. “When I hit the ground, I was purely convinced that my entire body was just ravaged, I mean, that I was dead,” he said.
His mother said, “Our life is just turned upside-down.”
It wasn’t just Worley’s grievous wounds; the cost of moving to Washington to be with him had drained the family savings. They didn’t even have enough for the baby’s winter clothes.
Then, his mother said “an angel” walked in the door: “She just sat down and started talking to all of us, and just wrote out a check and handed it to the kids.”
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That angel was sent by Karen Guenther, who was an ICU nurse at Camp Pendleton, California, when the wounded started coming in. “I believe God just put me in the right place at the right time,” she said. “I was standing next to a young spouse, and she was about 18 years old, and her husband, he was very disfigured, and she looked at him and her knees started to buckle. So, I sort of held her and whispered in her ear and I said, ‘You’ve got this, you can do this.’ And just experiencing that changed everything.”
Guenther had experience dealing with traumatic injuries, but she said what was so different in this case was that “this was so personal, and the number of injuries that we saw coming back, the severity of the injuries coming back, were historic.”
Many of them were coming back from the all-out battle for the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah. “We saw the families coming from all across the country to be by their son or daughter’s bedside,” Guenther said. “They were leaving their jobs, leaving their homes, but yet they still had to have a car payment and a mortgage, and they just simply couldn’t do it. So, that’s when we started the fund.”
She called it the Semper Fi & America’s Fund. “I didn’t know anything about starting a nonprofit, so I went to Barnes & Noble and I bought every book I could on nonprofits,” she said. “‘Nonprofits for Dummies’ was my very first book!”
The Battle of Fallujah raged for seven weeks. “It was overwhelming,” said Guenther. “At that time we did not have much money in the bank, enough to take care of the number of wounded coming back.”
Until the public met Joe Dan Worley, who told “60 Minutes” in 2004, “I worry all the time about being able to take care of my family, you know, and wondering what the future is going to hold.”
Guenther said, “If that piece hadn’t run, we would not have had the funds to take care of the families.”
To date, the Semper Fi Fund has given $500 million to 33,000 service members and their families – not just Marines, but all the armed services.
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In the beginning, the fund was focused on responding at the bedside of the wounded. But the real work started once service members went home. “If you come back and you’re quadriplegic or you’re a triple amputee, or even a simple, single amputee, there’s a life cycle of recovery,” said Guenther, “and these young men and women would need us for the rest of their lives.”
Worley was walking, but still wounded. His marriage to Angel was on the rocks. “It was a really rough patch,” he said.
“Something had to change or we weren’t going to make it,” said Angel.
Martin said, “That would have been a real shame.”
“Yeah, it would have,” she replied. “I think what made us work is we didn’t give up on each other at the same time.”
Worley added, “There are not many marriages that make it through what we’ve made it through.”
He started working out, with a vengeance, and their family kept growing. Abby, who turned one while her father was still at Walter Reed, is now 20. She has a sister and two brothers.
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Worley supplements his disability benefits by co-hosting a podcast for the American Legion. Even so, a case worker from Semper Fi checks in once a month. “For 20 years, they’re always there,” said Angel. “Like, we know if we really truly needed anything, we could ask.”
Martin asked, “Would you call yourself happy today?”
“Yes, yes,” Angel replied. “I always tell people, if you can make it through the hard times, what’s on the other side is so much better. It’s so worth it. Life is so good. We are so blessed.”
But, Guenther said, not all of their stories are success stories: “Our warriors are proud and strong and courageous, but sometimes they wear a mask, and they don’t allow others to see how much pain they’re going through, or the brain damage from blasts and concussion injuries.”
Do they know of people who have lost their marriages? “We do, especially our catastrophic injuries,” she said. “Oftentimes, right after the injury, the families, their adrenaline’s going – I can do this, I’m going to stay by my husband or wife’s side – but as the years go on, it can be very tough on marriages.”
Living on the outskirts of Atlanta, the Worley family is rich in the things that matter, with a pet pig on the side. But Joe Dan will never be free of Fallujah. For the 20th anniversary of the battle, he’s turned to music, recording a song, “The Ballad of JoeDan.”
“This is my song, that is for my guys that got killed while I was over there,” he said. “I’m carrying these people in my heart, not on my back, but in my heart.”
“The Ballad of JoeDan” is full of sorrow, but the life he has made is full of purpose. “The body probably could have done without a traumatic amputation, but I really love what I’ve grown into,” he said.
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Story produced by Mary Walsh. Editor: Mike Levine.
