Coral Gables Historical Archive
The Times
Saturday, September 11, 1976, page 2 (of 24)
The page
The text of this pageRead by computer from the scan, so some words may be wrong. The page picture is the original.
Loss of limbs in 'Nam doesn't slow him down
By ELIZABETH OWEN Staff Writer He was an All-City defensive end for Miami High and won a scholarship to The Citadel, a military college in South Carolina. He joined the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC), earned a bachelors degree in civil engineering and entered the Army Corps of Engineers as a second lieutenant. For all practical purposes, 25-year-old Ted Bridis — who lives at 9785 SW 145th St. — looked forward to a bright military career. He was married to a wonderful girl, Sally, who had just given birth to their first child, Teddy. In short, life could not have been sweeter. But Bridis was called to Vietnam in December, 1969, and within two months, his military career was over. He was clearing a hilltop with the Corps and was caught in the middle of a mortar barrage. "It was the third morning we were out there. I got up to get some water and I was caught in the first round of the mortar assault," Bridis recalls. When he hit the ground, he looked down and saw that one of his arms was gone and his legs were shot up. He felt no pain at the time. He wanted to get out of the way of tear gas, and he wanted to see his wife. He was airlifted to a hospital in Chu Lai. When he woke up — a stranger in a strange, white room — he remembered his wounds. He knew his arm was gone, and he asked the nurse if his legs were gone too. Yes, she answered, they had been amputated. He remembered a day in high school when a classmate lost a finger to a saw in shop class. "I thought that would be the worst thing that could possibly happen — losing a finger," Bridis said. "'I learned right off that you either make it good or not at all — you go with what you've got." Ted Bridis "When this happened to me, I was really surprised. I wasn't worried about myself . . . I just wondered how Sally would take it." His kidneys failed and he was rushed to Saigon. For three months, he was imprisoned by a dialysis machine. Afterwards, he was shipped stateside to Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C., then flown home to Miami, to the Veterans Administration Hospital. The moral questions surrounding the Vietnam War don't really matter to Bridis any more. Even when he was there, it wasn't his place to question it. "I wasn't sure what we were accomplishing in Vietnam. I simply felt I was doing my duty. Now, I know we didn't accomplish anything," Bridis said. ★ ★ ★ If doing one's duty entails losing three limbs, then so be it, he rationalized. Life goes on and Bridis wasn't about to miss any more of it. When his amputations healed, and he was free of the dialysis machine, he went to work. He enrolled at the University of Miami as a graduate student and worked part-time as a civil engineer until he earned his Masters degree. He then went to work full-time at Brevard Engineering Company in northwest Dade, and became active in such projects as improving 36th Street near the airport, working on Curtiss Parkway and Royal Poinciana, constructing the Card Sound Bridge, working on the NW 74th Street bridge, and improving airport facilities for the handicapped. He got involved in Dade Employ the Handicapped Committee and worked on the architectural barriers committee. He became a den leader for his son's Cub Scout pack, and he began selling religious books at Kendall Presbyterian Church on Sundays. ★ ★ ★ Going home in a wheelchair was the hard part. Although his wife accepted his loss of limbs, Bridis worried about little Teddy, who was then only two. But before he came home, Teddy had seen a movie entitled "The Guillotine." And when Sally explained what had happened to his father, the boy was at first silent, then later came up to her and said, "I know, Daddy's arm and legs were cut off like this," and he made a chopping motion with his hand. Bridis's second child, Tracy, was born after his return. As a father of two children, he was now even more the man of the family. It was up to him and him alone to show his wife and children he could make it. "When I got weak, everything seemed a challenge to me. There just wasn't time to sit around and think about things," said Bridis, now 30. "I learned right off that you either make it good or not at all — you go with what you've got."
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