The Push to Get Back into the Game
For Mark Stulz, a Marine, it was his recreational therapist Janelle Gustafson who convinced him to get on a plane and go to the National Veteran Wheelchair Games in New Orleans.
“She kept twisting my arm. Then she twisted both legs. She said you're going,” said Stulz. “I’ve known Janelle for probably a good four to five years.”
Gustafson helped him get a bike so he could virtually compete in the 2023 Wheelchair Games. “I rode 60 miles in four days and sent in a picture of my speedometer at the beginning and end,” he said. She also helped him participate remotely in air rifle shooting, a sport he does in his backyard. “They sent me the targets, I shot them, and sent them in. And I thought I did pretty good, until I saw what these other guys do. I could not shoot what they shot if I held the gun right above the target.”
Stulz served in the Marines from 1968-1974 and saw combat in Vietnam. “I started out carrying an M16, but got rid of that and got a 45. Because if it got bad enough where I had to use that, the CO and I were the last two living. So, we got a little less weight on my back,” said Stulz. “We (radio operators) had about 120 pounds with the radios and the batteries and stuff, plus your own gear.”
The weight of the gear, while uncomfortable, wasn’t the worst of his tour. “I was in a helicopter crash off Hill 950,” he remembered. “I medevacked everybody but myself off the hill, including the two pilots.” Stulz remembers the event saying most of the guys had broken bones, all he had was a cut on my finger. He got to safety, replaced the mic because it had ripped off in the crash, and called in the medevac.
He came home from Vietnam, and a year later the Marines sent him to jungle warfare school down in Panama. Then they sent him to scuba school, then recon school, then jump school and finally parachute packing school. “And my last year in the Marine Corps. What did I do? I was a Chaplains assistant at Quantico, Virginia,” he said with a laugh. “I really enjoyed it. I got to work with all the chaplains.”
By the time he got out of the Marines he had a four-year degree and started teaching math and industrial arts. When he returned to Minnesota he got married, had three kids and raised them in a house he built in Chaska. He lived his whole life as a working project manager and engineer for a number of different companies in the Twin Cities. He built another house in Victoria where he has been for 32 years.
A back surgery four years ago at a community partner hospital went well, until it became infected, paralyzing his legs from the waist down. Getting care at the Minneapolis VA is where he met Janelle, the gal responsible for getting him involved in Wheelchairs Games. “She knew a little bit about me and helped get me back to trying to get back to where I was with balance, walking and everything like that.”
Preparing for the Wheelchair Games not only helped in his recovery, he said it has given him the determination to compete again.
This summer, Gustafson won’t have to convince him to get on a plane for the Games, as the National Veterans Wheelchair Games, co-presented annually by U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and Paralyzed Veterans of America, will be held in Minneapolis July 17-22, 2025.
Learn how you can be a volunteer or register to be an athlete by visiting wheelchairgames.org. To see pictures from the 2024 Games, visit 2024 National Veterans Wheelchair Games | Flickr.