John Jones straps his feet into his snowboard, clicking the plastic bindings tightly in place. He’s sitting, feet outstretched and locked into his Burton board. He places the board flat on the ground and propels his upper body up and over the board until it rests behind him while his knees support his body. “This is how I have to get up on the mountain,” he says, demonstrating the final push from his knees to a standing position. “I don’t have the ankle balance to get up the other way,” he explains.

Amputee Snowboarder
It’s anything but obvious when watching John carve down a mountain that he’s one of the few amputees who attempt snowboarding—a sport reliant on balance and a combination of knee, ankle, and foot articulation. John, a double, below-the-knee amputee, was determined to conquer the mountain on a board and he makes it look effortless. Although he enjoys catching air in his monoski, he craves the challenges presented by snowboarding.

Choosing to Amputate
While serving as a staff sergeant in the Marine Corps, John was sent to Iraq. Twice. “The second time was the charm,” John recalls. While in a Humvee with his fellow soldiers, John was hit by a double-stack anti-tank line, a mine designed to destroy tanks. Once hit, John flew 25 feet into the air and landed behind the Humvee.

The mine took his right leg off below the knee and most of his left leg below the knee. The doctors spent 10 months attempting to save the left leg, but finally, due to excessive pain, John elected to amputate the left leg. “I said ‘amputate and we’ll go from there.’”

Wounded Warrior Project
Meanwhile, John was visited by representatives from the Wounded Warrior Project. They came to see him in the hospital, giving him a backpack full of information on how to participate in dozens of programs—hunting, water skiing, rock climbing, fishing—all adapted for any ability. “It’s a brotherhood,” John says of the Wounded Warriors.

From rehab he went on to participate in the Endeavor games, playing wheelchair basketball and fencing. While John was happy to participate, he was looking for something different, and that came with the advent of his introduction to Kirk Bauer. Two months following John’s second amputation, Kirk, the Executive Director of Disabled Sports USA and a partner in the Wounded Warrior project, called John and told him, “You’re going skiing with us.” John balked at the idea, “Kirk, I can’t even stand up yet, I don’t have my legs underneath me.” Kirk dismisses this, “It doesn’t matter; you can sit down and ski.” John decided, “Now this is something different.”

Adaptive Skiing Begins
John’s exceptional sense of balance made him a natural on the monoski. He was assigned an instructor for the week; however, she became unnecessary after the first day. John was in the terrain park the first day, catching air off jumps. And he only got better from there. He tried his hand at racing, but wanted to snowboard. “I can do basic runs on the board, but I still go back to my bucket (monoski) to go fast and get air.”

A week of skiing, provided by DSUSA and the Wounded Warriors, gave John a much-needed boost. In appreciation of the new perspective he felt after skiing, he began speaking at fundraising events. In fact, he helped raise $750,000 at an event in New York. “People realize what a great program Wounded Warriors is. They pay for everything. It was a good call for me to come out and help. They’ve given me so much, I want to give back to them.”

Teaching Disabled Veterans Gun Safety
When John isn’t catching air on the mountain, he lives with his wife and two kids in San Antonio, Texas. He’s a firearms weapons instructor at Brook Army Medical Center at the Center for the Intrepid (CFI). He teaches veterans with disabilities to shoot safely with their new prosthetic. He retrains them to shoot for returning to duty and to qualify with their weapon. John doesn’t want to go back to the military because he knows he’d be assigned a desk job. He’s adamant that that wouldn’t be for him. He quips, “I’d want to be on the front lines.”

We Volunteered for You
What John wants people to understand is simple: “We volunteered our service. Guys volunteer, they go over to Iraq, and they get hurt. It’s important for Americans to realize that we volunteer to give them freedom. Most people just don’t know how to say ‘thank you.’ They usually come up and shake my hand.”

John shared a time when someone offered appreciation in a very different way. A woman in the grocery store, seeing John’s legs, asked if he was hurt in the service. When John replied in the affirmative, she grabbed his grocery cart and pushed it to the cash register, handed her credit card to the cashier, and said, “Your groceries are on me.” John was blown away by her kindness. “It was great.”

John credits this appreciation and treatment of veterans to changing times. “The Vietnam vets have been a really big push for us so we didn’t get treated like they did. And we’re the next generation that will lobby at the White House for the veterans who come after us.”

No doubt. John Jones is equal parts character, commitment and determination. He might be injured but there’s no end to the momentum he displays both on and off the slopes.

See Related Articles
See Amputee Veteran Dawn Halfaker Takes on the World to learn more about veterans with amputations and what they're doing after their service.

Learn more about how veterans with amputations have changed throughout history, in Disabled Veterans: From Amputees in the Civil War to SCI in the Iraq War.