An injured Navy veteran from Jacksonville competed against other military veterans for $50,000 before a national audience.
Brett Parks, 37, from Jacksonville, was selected by event organizers to compete in the Power Triumph Games, which will be broadcast nationally, starting Monday. The Triumph Games is a paralympic competition in which participants compete in the same physical challenges the U.S. Military Academy’s students have to complete to graduate. The competition will air as a miniseries on the CBS Sports Network.
Parks served as a flight engineer in the Navy for five-and-a-half years. He happened to be back home, outside of the Jacksonville navy base, when he had an encounter that changed his life.
On October 17, 2012 Parks heard a man screaming and ran to help when he saw a man getting robbed at gunpoint. So he tried to grab the gun from the attacker and ended up shot in the abdomen. He was rushed to the hospital and given six months to live. Parks survived after being in a coma of 20 days, with the lower part of his right leg amputated.
After two years, he started competing in paralympic games, including Department of Defense Warrior Games, the Invictus Games in London and Orlando.
“What I think is important — or at least what I thought was important back then — is really trivial now,” he said. “So I try to see the bigger picture and doing things like the Power Triumph Games and being able to push my body to the point of total fatigue. It really feels good because it makes me feel alive.”
News intern Andre Roman can be reached at newsteam@wjct.org or on Twitter @DreRadio
