Our Heroes

Sergeant Gary Boggs, U.S. Army (Ret.), National Spokesman

On September 26, 2003 Gary Boggs was headed to Qatar from Iraq for a few days of rest and relaxation when the road home took a tragic turn.  It was supposed to be his first day off since May 2 of that year, but a few miles south of the Tikrit camp, Gary’s Humvee was hit badly by an IED.  Shrapnel pelted the left side of his body causing him to lose an eye, rupturing both ear drums, and damaging nerves to his left arm and hand.  Gary was evacuated to Baghdad for immediate surgery on his eye, then to Kuwait and finally flown to a hospital in Landstuhl, Germany to begin his road to recovery. 

His doctors believed these were the worst of his injuries. It wasn't until Gary noticed this year he was forgetting just-read paragraphs that he began to think there might be more to it.  Fellow injured soldiers he met through the Coalition to Salute America’s Heroes gave him the courage to seek help, and this year he was diagnosed with mild traumatic brain injury.

This year, Gary accepted a position in the Quality Assurance division of Northrop Grumman, which came as a result of attending the Job Fair at the Third Annual Road to Recovery Conference & Tribute in 2006. 

Gary currently lives in Melbourne Beach, FL and is attending school at Franklin University to get two bachelors degrees, one in Business Management and the other in Communications.

As a National Spokesperson for the Coalition to Salute America’s Heroes, he is able to share his story with other wounded troops and their families to show them how CSAH can open doors that they might otherwise believe are closed.