EATON — An Eaton manufacturer has teamed up with Semper Fi and an Eaton-based mobility business to make sure an Ohio Army veteran can get around better with use of a new motorized chair.

Bullen Ultrasonics’ Veterans Employee Resource Group (VERG) makes a donation each year to a charity, veteran, or family of a veteran in need. This year, the VERG donated through Semper Fi to help fund the purchase of a Zoom wheelchair for an Ohio native.

Justin Shellhammer was with the Fort Campbell, Kentucky 101st. “I’ve been to Kosovo, Bosnia, Africa, Iraq, Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said last week. He was sent to Aghanistan in March 2005, and returned an amputee.

He shared his story: “I stepped on a land mine in Afghanistan three weeks in, which was really heartbreaking for me because I was getting ready to reenlist indefinitely,” he said. “I was all for the Army and you know, do anything I had to for my country. I loved it. And where else can you go and shoot guns and get paid for it? I mean, it was just the coolest job in the world. That’s what I always wanted to do, be a cop and be in the Army and I got to do both. I was a cop in the army.

“We went out to the grid coordinates and went from like a dirt road down to a dirt trail. So I kept the three trucks back, kept a gunner in each truck and one team leader to be in charge of if they had to shoot or anything like that,” he said.

“I just kind of had a gut feeling — if anybody’s ever got a gut feeling you know automatically, I’m always going with my gut,” he continued. “I just tried to do a controlled halt and the two guys behind me weren’t paying attention and bumped into me. I stepped on a landmine, and it went off.”

After his recovery, Shellhammer said he was a motorcycle mechanic, and then became the first person ever in South Dakota history to be an amputee going through the police academy. “I passed with flying colors but had to have a waiver from the governor. The governor made a big deal out of it, would come and send somebody to check on me all the time,” he said.

After a post-traumatic stress disorder flare caused flashbacks which kept him from sleeping at night, he would fall asleep at work. “I was a police officer for like 12 years, but I would fall asleep at work because I couldn’t sleep during the night when I had to get off. So I got medically retired because of PTSD. Now I’m a stay-at-home dad, which everybody’s like, ‘Oh man, that’s gotta be great.’ No, it was easier being a police officer,” Shellhammer said.

“The chair that Justin’s getting, it’s from Sweden. It’s called Zoomability,” Kim McCabe of McCabe’s Outdoor Mobility said. “It’s an all-terrain four-wheel drive chair and allows him to do mountain bike trails, bike trails, beach, that kind of stuff. It does 12.5 miles an hour. It doesn’t sound very fast, but he got to try it a little while ago. And for wheelchairs that’s super-fast. So, he’s going to be able to go keep up with his kids, when they start getting really into bikes and camping and stuff like that and he’ll be able to go everywhere. Because after a while, especially the longer he has that prosthetic, the harder it is to be on it all day.”

McCabe’s Outdoor Mobility hopes to encourage local factories like Bullen and other businesses to help some of the veterans who need it, “because, not everybody gets what they need,” she said. “We also would like to raise awareness not just for veterans, there’s a lot of programs out there for veterans, but there’s also children, that were born with a disability. It’s hard to believe in this day and age that we’ve got children that have never gone in the woods, never gone fishing, and never had the opportunity to go on the beach just because they can’t get a wheelchair that’s going to allow it.”

“We want to start bringing awareness to some of the companies and things around, you know, trying to pick a child and a community that maybe we can get multiple organizations to help with.”

Bullen has an employee resource group for veterans. There were a couple reasons why the charitable group decided to help McCabe’s get Shellhammer his chair, Bullen President Tim Beatty said.

“About 10 percent of our workforce are veterans, or active-duty reservists and so that’s number one. And two, I was thinking about this today, is part of our vision statement is to turn opportunities into realities. So we do that with our customers and want to do it in the community too. We do work all around the world that we support with our charitable contributions.”

“I am very honored and shocked to be granted a donation from Bullen Ultrasonics to go towards the purchase of my Zoom Chair,” Shellhammer said in a written statement when applying for the chair. This is truly a blessing.”

Semper Fi & America’s Fund is a charitable organization which cares for the nation’s critically wounded, ill, and injured service members, veterans, and military families. It supports all branches of the U.S. Armed Forces. For more information, visit www.thefund.org.

Reach Eddie Mowen Jr. at 937-683-4061 and follow on X @emowenjr.