All-terrain ‘TrackChair’ gives veteran new possibilities

WASILLA — Sometimes when you find something good you want to keep it a secret.

But sometimes you find something so good, you have to tell everyone he good news.

That’s the case with Andrew Liebig and his Action TrackChair.

“It’s no fun being the only TrackChair guy out there,” he said.

Liebig is a military veteran, confined to a wheelchair due to a service-related injury or illness he doesn’t talk much about. What he does talk a lot about, though, is his all-terrain chair, the places it lets him go and the foundation that made it possible.

“I’ve been volunteering with The Independence Fund since I got this back in July,” Liebig said, sitting in his TrackChair in his garage in a neighborhood off of Knik-Goose Bay Road.

On Friday, a delegation from the Cordova Telephone Cooperative showed up at his house with a check for $15,000 for the Independence Fund. The cooperative said it wanted both to support The Independence Fund and to challenge other organizations to do the same.

As for the chair, Liebig said it has meant the world to him. The tracks on it allow him to go virtually anywhere he did before he lost his mobility.

It mean small things:

“Last night we got home and took the dogs for a walk, my daughters and I, went a mile down the road,” he said, before adding that afterwards he configured the chair into the position that stands him upright and proceeded to wash the windows on his home.

It’s also meant much bigger things, milestones like the one he passed when he took his daughters to their annual summer camp.

“This summer, for the first time, I went down to the lake,” he said.

He told a story about waiting for moose on a moose hunt — he’s outfitted the chair with a gun rack and shooting mounts — when he realized he wasn’t thinking about his disability or how to accommodate it. He was just enjoying the hunt.

He said that’s why he wants his fellow veterans to know about the Independence Fund. The chairs are just one of the mobility devices the group provides to veterans. Liebig said he heard about the foundation from a friend who was injured. The fund has given out 750 of the chairs in the Lower 48, but so far, Liebig is actually the first and only Alaska applicant.

Liebig’s wife, Jean, said that when they went to the Alaska State Fair this year her husband was like a celebrity; people stopped to ask about the chair an pose for photos.

When he heard that no one else had applied for a chair in Alaska, Liebig said, he told the fund he’d work to change that.

“I’ve got a loud voice, we’ll see what we can do,” he said.

He suggested interested people should visit independencefund.org.

Liebig said his wants to see the chairs become more commonplace in the areas of Alaska.

“If I pass another guy on a TrackChair I’ll know I’ve done my job,” he said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.