Philanthropist Provides Care That The Pentagon Won't

[unhappycamper]

Bobby McKinney, 29, prepares to groom a horse at the Chastain Horse Park in Atlanta as part of the cognitive rehabilitation therapy provided by the Project Share program, which aids brain-damaged soldiers.


Philanthropist Provides Care That The Pentagon Won't
T. Christian Miller and Daniel Zwerdling
December 21, 2010

ATLANTA — One afternoon this fall, Bobby McKinney hunched over a coffee table with a clear glass surface. A lamp with a bare light bulb illuminated it from below. Pencil in hand, the former Marine traced the pattern for a tattoo across delicate paper, a swirling, intricate design reminiscent of a Celtic cross.

McKinney's small apartment faded from his thoughts: The closet filled with shirts and pairs of jeans, hung three inches apart, all facing exactly the same direction, the way the Marines had taught him. The box packed with a dozen brown plastic medicine bottles. The worn couch that he slept on instead of the bed. The eraser board on his refrigerator where he had scrawled "A coward dies a 1,000 deaths. A warrior dies one."

Suddenly, a nurse's aide knocked on the door. Had he checked the oven? McKinney leapt up and ran to the kitchen, pulling out a tin of brownies on the point of burning.

"I guess I was just very focused on the tattoo design," he told a counselor later, pushing a camouflage baseball cap back on his head. "I set the alarm. I guess I just didn't hear it."

"Try to work on one thing at a time," she told him. "Multitasking is just asking the brain to do two or three things not too well."

[Sal Minella]

1. Self-delete.