Soldier On

As a former teacher, preacher, and police chief, Anthony Smith lived to serve others. So when his National Guard unit was sent to Iraq in 2003, Smith took it in stride, until a rocket-propelled grenade hit and nearly killed him. The strike left the U.S. Army major with multiple injuries, including the loss of his right arm below the elbow, a broken jaw, impaired vision and hearing, a damaged kidney, and spinal cord injuries.

“It’s a shock when you wake up and don’t have an arm, and they’re telling you you’ll never walk again,” says Smith, who spent 18 months at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio and three months at the Memphis VA Medical Center in Tennessee. Smith’s injuries made him wonder about his life’s purpose: “When you get injured and you’ve been doing all that service, your mind thinks, ‘How am I going to help people when I can’t even help myself?’”

It’s not unusual for people to lose their sense of purpose or direction when they equate it with a particular profession or role in life, says Cheryl Davis Jordan, a leadership development coach and owner of Color Outside the Lines in Fort Washington, Maryland. However, your true purpose is a reflection of your inner gifts and qualities, she asserts. “Once you know what your gifts are, you can apply them to any situation.”

It took three years for Smith to recover, after which he briefly returned to work on

the police force. It didn’t last, Smith believes, because “they didn’t think I could do the job.” The loss, however, led to a turning point for him. He channeled his frustration into making his body stronger through martial arts, which he’d loved as a child. “Martial arts teach you that the inner man is always stronger than the outer man,” says Smith, now 44. “I figured if I got back into martial arts, it would give me the strength I needed.” Smith figured right.

A trainer with Operation Rebound (www.operationrebound.org), a San Diego-based organization that provides athletic opportunities to veterans who’ve suffered permanent physical injuries, helped him condition himself inside and out, enough that Smith eventually competed in several triathlons and

Ironman-like competitions (in which competitors swim, bike, and run–because Smith was directly hit in his hip, someone else runs for him, though he does run shorter distances on his own). During the competitions, Smith couldn’t help noticing that people, especially youngsters, with all types of disabilities were taking part. He decided he would serve others again, this time as a martial arts instructor.

With the support of his family, friends, and organizations such as St. Louis-based The Mission Continues (www.mission continues.org), which provides fellowships to wounded veterans who engage in service, Smith opened Anthony’s Martial Arts Academy in Blytheville, Arkansas, last May. He teaches martial arts to people of all ages, including disadvantaged youth, and now has three locations.
“I had 15 students when I first opened,” recalls Smith. “About five months later, I had 90.” Today, Smith trains about 185 students ranging in age from 5 to 65 in arts such as tai chi, tae kwon do, and others. “I use martial arts as a character builder,” says Smith. “If you’ve got it on the inside, then it’s going to come out on the outside.”

His students have received countless lessons in patience, bravery, and awareness, while Smith got something even greater: a renewed sense of purpose. “I thought I was doing the martial arts to keep myself going,” he says, with a lighthearted laugh. “I was trying to figure out what my purpose was, and people around me said, ‘Dude, you’re doing it.’”