Dave Roever’s Message of Hope

Dave Roever’s path to becoming a motivational speaker hasn’t been an easy one, but taking into consideration the war-inflicted obstacles he’s had to overcome, his message of hope is one that can benefit us all.

Vietnam Vet Brings Message Of Hope

Dave Roever Horrifically Burned, Tells Bulldog Brigade “Don’t Give Up”

by Spc. John S. Wollaston
3BCT PAO

BAGHDAD, IRAQ – Sometimes, when you’re having a bad day, it helps to talk to someone who’s had a worse day and made it through. For the soldiers of the Bulldog Brigade, still feeling the effects of a “bad day” announcement of a 6-week extension to their combat deployment in Iraq the day before, hearing Dave Roever talk was the shot in the arm that most of 3rd Brigade needed.

“I want to tell you from the bottom of my heart as I stand here before you today, thank you for what you’re doing over here,” Mr. Roever said to a full house at the Brigade’s Bulldog Theater. “It’s been thirty-two years since I’ve been in a combat zone and I wanted to come here to say thanks for allowing me to sleep comfortably in my bed at night.”

If there’s ever been anyone who’s taken advantage of the adage about “turning lemons into lemonade,” it’s Dave Roever. A gunner’s mate in the “Brown Water” Navy in Vietnam, Roever was on a patrol when a phosphorus grenade exploded next to his face severely burning most of his body.

“I was getting ready to throw it to burn away some brush near the banks of the river when it went off. Just one second longer was all I would have needed and that grenade would have been out of my hands,” Roever explained.

He then tells the audience another important factor had that grenade been out of his hands. Had the grenade been tossed safely overboard, the sniper’s bullet that struck the grenade causing it to explode prematurely in his hand would have killed him instead.

Roever was so badly burned that the medics who loaded him on the helicopter thought he was dead.

“I had half of my face and my right ear burned completely away, I had blood spurting from an open artery in my right hand, and I could see my heart beating in my chest,” Roever told a captivated audience. “When the medics initially put me on the stretcher, I burned through the stretcher and fell on my head when I hit the ground.”

Wrapped in a blanket soaked in river water, Roever was finally loaded in the helicopter. Thinking he was dead, the medics didn’t do anything to try and help him, and so Roever took matter into his own hands. “From under that blanket I summoned all the strength I had left and yelled ‘Medic!’ That got everyone’s attention real fast.”

Roever, who is now a successful motivational speaker, travels delivering his message of hope and telling people how he overcame adversity.

His message seemed to strike a chord with the Bulldog soldiers. That message is that no matter how bad things seem to be, don’t give up. And Roever should know, because when everyone else gave up on him, Dave Roever didn’t give up on himself. From laying in the burn unit at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas listening to his father read to him the telegram telling him that his son had died, which Roever says they were both laughing at, to the nearly two years he spent in hospitals going through surgeries to repair and replace his burned skin to the support and love of his wife, he never gave up. Well, almost never….

Roever relates the story about how early in his recovery after seeing himself in a mirror, he’d tried to “pull the cord” in an attempt to disconnect the IV’s that were keeping him alive. “But I pulled the wrong one,” Roever says laughing with his audience. “And when you wake up wanting a cheeseburger like I did, you know that maybe it wasn’t your time to die.”

Roever told the soldiers to seek out friends and loved ones to talk to about their experiences in Iraq when they return and not go back to bad habits they might have shaken or gotten rid of due to their deployment.

Brigade Command Sergeant Major Nathaniel Hopkins, who presented Mr. Roever with a Bulldog Brigade coin and a certificate of appreciation for his visit, seemed to sum up the feeling of most of the soldiers in attendance when he said, “I was feeling pretty down about our situation, until I heard you speak. Now thanks to you I’m feeling better.”

Before he left, Roever posed for pictures, signed autographs, and visited the soldiers standing guard around the compound who did not have the opportunity to hear him speak, thanking all of them for serving and doing their duty in Iraq.

Copyright 2003-2010 John S. Wollaston
Reprinted by Permission
All Rights Reserved

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