FISHER HOUSE - HELPING MILITARY FAMILIES

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MINNEAPOLIS - The therapy is hard work, but as a rancher who handled 400 cattle in Nebraska for nearly 20 years, Ted Johnson is used to that.

“I wished I could get back there, but it’s a long road,” Johnson said.

As he has traveled the road to recovery, his wife, Lila, has walked alongside him every day since he was injured.

“He did the same thing he had done 100 times before that morning,” she recalled. “He was adjusting a big auger on the side of a bin when he stepped back, it caught his foot and it flipped him upside down. He fell 12 feet and landed on his head and broke his neck.”

For the first two months, Lila Johnson didn’t know whether or not her husband would live. He was paralyzed, on a ventilator and a feeding tube.

Ted Johnson’s fight would mean new therapy at a new treatment facility with better technology and highly-trained staff far from his Nebraska ranch.

“I was scared silly,” Lila Johnson said. “Didn’t know anyone, it was so far from home.”

Before his rancher days, Ted Johnson served as a general’s aide in the United States Army. His service in Vietnam meant he could now be seen at one of the nation’s top facilities for severe injuries like his: The Minneapolis VA Health Care System.

In the eight weeks he has spent receiving treatment, Ted Johnson has gained enough strength to operate an electric wheelchair -- something he couldn’t even consider before due to the pain.

Yet, being so far from home meant his wife would need somewhere to live, somewhere near the hospital and somewhere affordable.

Now, a brand new 16,000-square-foot, 20-bedroom luxury home complete with granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, tile floors and stylish décor will become Lila Johnson’s home away from home thanks to a group called the Fisher House Foundation.

“I didn’t want to touch anything -- thought I’d mess it up,” Lila Johnson said.

The privately- and publicly-funded home is one of 54 built on the grounds of major military and VA medical centers to help keep family members close to their loved ones as they go through treatment for illness or injury for as long as their loved one is receiving care.

“It’s real gratifying in the morning,” said Ted Johnson. “In the morning, when 8 o’clock comes, she’s here and feeds me my breakfast. That’s a big part of getting my day started.”

Thanks to the home, the two can work together on this new journey just as they have along others in their 41 years of marriage. That togetherness is something Tom McDonough says is critical to a patient’s recovery, and the love and support is what drew him and his family to the Fisher House.

“My daughter, Shannon, called me one day and said, ‘I know what we should do. Let’s build a Fisher House in Bryan’s name,’” he said. “I thought that was a great idea.”

In December 2006, Tom and Renee McDonough’s 22-year-old son, Bryan, was driving an Army Humvee in Iraq when his convoy hit an IED and Bryan McDonough was killed two weeks before he was to return home.

“Bryan was a great kid, grew up in Maplewood, joined the Minnesota National Guard after the war in Iraq started knowing he’d be deployed. At first, I wasn’t too excited about it. I asked him why he wanted to do that,” Tom McDonough recalled. “His answer was, ‘If not me, then who?’”

That message echoed with his father, who felt that if not the McDonoughs, who else would step up now and help Minnesota’s wounded soldiers and their families?

“It happened really quickly,” Tom McDonough said. “I have to admit, the grief is awful and the shock is awful -- but the first thing you think of is that you don’t’ want anybody to forget about it. That’s where the idea for the foundation came up.”

In just one year, the Bryan McDonough Military Heroes Foundation raised $150,000 to help with the construction of the new Fisher House in Minneapolis.

The Fisher family was so impressed by the McDonoughs fundraising tenacity that they wanted to help the family keep Bryan McDonough’s memory alive. Now, a garden bench and plaque with his name on it sits at the wheelchair ramp to the entrance of the house.

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