Dealing with a cancer diagnosis or the news that you need an organ transplant is more than enough to test the maturity and emotional stability of a well-adjusted adult, but how does a young child handle such a thing?  Starlight Children’s Foundation’s mission is to help seriously ill children and their families cope with the pain, fear and isolation that comes with fighting such difficult conditions.  One way they do this is by holding special parties that give an ill child and their entire family a break from the day-to-day stresses of hospitals and doctors, and offer the opportunity to just be a kid.

Skydive Chicago isn’t really located in Chicago, being about a 90 minute drive from Millennium Park, my personal zero milestone for the city.  But the “skydive” part certainly is accurate, with planeloads of jumpers climbing into the sky seemingly every few minutes.  I was in Chicago to shoot an assignment for a regular client of mine, and managed to spend a weekend with old friends I hadn’t seen in many years.  One of my friends’ sister had decided to make her first jump that weekend, so we all headed out to the single runway airport Skydive Chicago uses as their base to watch and support her.

From being strapped into the harness, to getting instructions from her tandem instructor, seeing her chute in the sky, and her joyous victory dance after landing, to watching her and my friends watch the helmet-cam video of her jump, it all looked like a ton of fun, and left me wanting to try it sometime very soon.  Next time I’m in Chicago . . .

Sgt. Marcus Kuboy, an Army National Guard medic, was on patrol near Fallujah, Iraq, when the Humvee he was in struck a roadside IED. The driver, Kuboy’s best friend, was killed instantly. The force of the blast left Kuboy himself with an almost incomprehensible list of injuries – broken back, traumatic brain injury, broken arm, broken jaw, and severely damaged legs. After many surgeries, and seemingly endless rehabilitation and physical therapy, Kuboy can walk with the aid of a cane for short periods. He may always need a wheelchair for longer distances. Yet when he learned that he had been chosen to receive a custom-built home, free of charge, courtesy of the nonpartisan Homes For Our Troops organization, Kuboy was stunned. It was as though he couldn’t imagine that his injuries and his service warranted such generosity.

I photographed several volunteer days, when anyone who was interested — skilled or not — could help frame out the house, carry supplies, plant trees and flowers, and perform many other tasks. Over the course of these days, I heard Kuboy relate the story of his injury and slow recovery many times. Though some are eager to call him a hero, Kuboy is uncomfortable with that label. He wasn’t trying to be heroic, he said, he was just trying to get through the day. So when he balanced on his crutches to shake hands with a long line of volunteers and thank them for their efforts, Kuboy seemed a little frustrated that they invariably turned the praise and thanks back on him for his service and sacrifice. I think Kuboy had made peace with his injuries and their effects on the rest of his life, and wanted nothing more than for the scores of volunteers who were happily building his home to see things from his point of view – that he was just one man who, because of forces beyond his control, had been injured doing his job. By contrast, the mass of volunteers represented hundreds of businesses and individuals who had donated their unpaid time and energy. In essence, neither Kuboy nor the volunteers seemed comfortable accepting praise for their actions, for fear of obscuring what each thought was the more significant sacrifice of the other. In an age when celebrities are famous only for being famous, and the phrase “no such thing as bad publicity” has become unassailable wisdom, this gentle standoff had more than enough recognition to go around.

Matthew Sanford is an affable and voluble guy. As an author and experienced yoga teacher and practitioner, he is happy to answer a stranger’s naive questions about yoga, even though he’s clearly done so many times before. But he really comes to life when talking about the mind-body connection, a central tenet of all forms of yoga. He is articulate and passionate in his belief that a deeper appreciation of the interaction between the mental and the corporeal could help just about everybody, from the mildly stressed out to the seriously injured and even the permanently disabled. Some might doubt such a claim, but if you are talking to Sanford in person, it’s tough to be skeptical. That’s because Sanford relies on a wheelchair to get around, ever since a devastating car accident when he was 13 left him paralyzed from the chest down.

I was asked to photograph Sanford for a magazine cover story earlier this year. I spent time with him at his home, at his professional yoga studio, and at Courage Center, where Sanford teaches adapted yoga to people with all sorts of disabilities. It took me a few moments to get over the initial surprise of seeing a paraplegic yoga instructor rolling his wheelchair among students, offering them advice and encouragement. But I was in for an even bigger surprise when we spent several hours doing a portrait session. Sanford adeptly slid from his chair onto a yoga mat and proceeded to hold a large variety of sitting yoga poses for me while I fired away. He held his legs tight against his chest while balancing on his butt so that he resembled a closed pocketknife. He used his hands to pick up and fold his legs into the traditional lotus position. He stretched, balanced, and extended for as long as I wanted. There seemed little he couldn’t do, and I left that shoot greatly impressed. I was struck not only by how Sanford has physically adapted to his disability and what he can’t do, but how he has chosen to focus on the many things he can do. His attitude reminded me of a friend’s joke. Three baseball umpires with varying experience are chatting over coffee. The first and most junior says, “I call ‘em as I see ‘em.” The next umpire, who has several years of experience, says, “I call ‘em as they are.” The last and most experienced says, “They ain’t nothin’ till I call ‘em.” In a way, Sanford has chosen to be the umpire of his own life.