Home at Last selects 2015 home recipient

OAKLAND — Home at Last Project Inc. officials have selected and announced the disabled military veteran and his family who will receive the home constructed in its 2015 project, the seventh such home for the organization.

Combat-wounded Marine Staff Sgt. Brandon Wittwer; his wife, Kassandra; and their three children, Kaydance, Karter and Kylee, will be the recipients of a home at Cross Street and Briley Avenue in Oakland. They currently are residing with a friend who also recently left military work after 24 years, Wittwer said, and both parents graduated from Osceola High School in Kissimmee.

“The 30-year-old staff sergeant, a 12-year Marine veteran, has served our country well and faithfully with deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Home at Last Project Chairman Bill Criswell said. “We are anxious to start work on the project, and Jack Scott, our architect, has again volunteered his services. Winter Park Construction and Hensel Phelps Construction Co. will plan and coordinate all construction activity.”

Construction currently is scheduled to start in mid-May, Criswell said, giving crews time to finish it as their 2015 project.

SERVICE RECORD

Wittwer enlisted in the Marine Corps in August 2002 and deployed to Okinawa for three months in 2003, after which came four months on the South Pacific Ocean in areas around Indonesia, the Philippines and Australia, he said. His second deployment was to northeast Afghanistan in 2004 and 2005.

In 2006, Wittwer accepted a deployment to Iraq as a scout sniper team leader that lasted seven months in the city of Haditha. Reports said his unit was the target of an ambush from nearby buildings and surrounding rooftops while on a mission to locate and snipe a high-value target near the Euphrates River. Wittwer and his team were loading an evacuation vehicle when a rocket-propelled grenade exploded near their position. The blast rendered Wittwer unconscious, and his team was forced into an exchange of gunfire. The team was able to fight its way back to its forward operating base to rush its wounded soldiers to the aid station. Wittwer suffered from severe head, neck and back pain that affected much of his spinal cord but ignored it so that he could assist the other wounded Marines in his team.

Wittwer then took “time off” stationed in Hawaii and North Carolina, he said.

“I landed a job as a primary marksmanship instructor, teaching young guys how to shoot and things that go with the scout sniper job,” Wittwer said. “I got hurt and had orders to go to (Third Battalion, Second Marines), spent almost four years there as a platoon sniper and commander for a short time and transferred for a short time to a rifle sergeant.”

Another deployment in 2013 resulted in Wittwer traveling to Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, also traversing the Persian Gulf, Red Sea and Syria during conflicts there, before finishing in Spain. He suffered further injuries during that deployment and required additional medical treatment and evaluation with the Wounded Warrior Battalion for traumatic brain injury.

“My back and spine injuries went undiagnosed for seven years,” Wittwer said. “Over that timeframe, I had a hard time accepting the fact things weren’t the way they should’ve been with my physical pain. I opened myself to the doctors, and they found things that have been going wrong a long time.”

Doctors ultimately diagnosed the injuries to his spine as two bulging disks and the start of an accelerated degenerative disk disease in his lumbar spine and cervical spine, caused by the rocket-propelled grenade explosion. This disease will not heal, and doctors believe he eventually will require a wheelchair.

Because of this series of injuries to his spine and multiple head traumas, as well as the risks associated with such conditions, Wittwer received an honorable discharge and medical retirement from the Marine Corps in November 2014, with a 100% disability rating.

Despite the difficulties from training through life-changing irreversible consequences, the military offered adventure and excitement while helping Wittwer become a better person, he said.

“You have to be dedicated,” he said. “Especially in the Marine Corps, it’s not gonna be easy. If it was, everyone would do it.”

MAKING A HOME

“Since we’ve been out, it’s been real difficult,” Wittwer said. “We’ve moved three times in three months. Our kids are in our fourth school this school year. I’ve been real active in the VA program, going through … testing, and I’m up there once or twice every 10 days or so to go to numerous appointments. I’ve just been trying to spend time with my family, really, that I haven’t had a luxury of doing much in the last 10 years.”

As the place where they grew up, the Wittwers wish to make their home in Central Florida.

“My last position was in North Carolina,” Wittwer said. “I got more comfortable, I guess, with country life than city life. I was born in Indiana, so it was a little more rural. I had some anxiety and PTSD issues, and I think Oakland offers some seclusion from the hustle and bustle of city life. Kissimmee has grown — it’s stressful, the big city. Just from the couple of times I’ve visited Oakland and some of the other service members, that seems like an idyllic place I could sit and rest.”

Oakland life could reduce stress for the whole family, with few crowds to trigger Wittwer’s surveillance mode, so his mind could be at ease, he said.

“The hardest part about me accepting this new house is the fact I made it home alive with 10 fingers and 10 toes,” he said. “The mind and body don’t work the best and probably never will. I never joined the military seeking recognition for anything. If anything, it’s soothing I can give to my wife and kids and honor the men and women who didn’t make it home or are worse off than I am.”

Wittwer hopes to pay forward the care the U.S. and Home at Last offer veterans to honor his military friends who have died, he said.

“Coming home, people extend a warm welcome, hug, thank-you or something, and it’s really rewarding,” he said. “You fought for your country one way or another, and people recognize that. We’re leaps and bounds ahead of where we were culturally after the Vietnam War. People appreciate us, and that’s something that I’ll always cherish.”

Home at Last personnel will construct a house they refer to as “disability-friendly,” from which Wittwer hopes to take online courses to begin a path to some job involving flight, a fascination he has had since he was 8, he said.

“I’m looking at what my dream was as a kid: the flight industry,” he said. “With my current conditions, I don’t know if I could even pass a private flight physical. I was looking at aeronautical engineering or aerospace engineering. I was pretty good with math — there’s sniper math in the military. I’ll … see what transfers from the military for something less trying on the mind, body and soul, using my hands as opposed to my back.”

For more information, visit HomeatLastHomes.org or contact Bill Criswell at (407) 876-2472 or [email protected].

Contact Zak Kerr at [email protected].