We’ve failed Legless Jim

Lots of people come through the doors of the Frontiersman for a variety of reasons. Most want help with publicity, some come to complain about stories or undelivered papers, others have personal stories.

A man came in recently whose wife is dying with cancer and wanted us to write a story so people could pray for her. There are a hundred stories like that out there and we can’t cover them all, nor do we attempt to for a variety of reasons.

One touched us so much, though, that we couldn’t ignore.

Jim White walked through our doors on his fists.

Peripheral Degenerative Vascular Disease resulted in a series of operations in an attempt to get blood flowing to his legs. Those failed and several amputations have left Jim White with virtually no legs. We dubbed him, with his blessing, Legless Jim.

He lives with his wife, a diabetic, and two sons in a 49-year-old trailer on five acres off Knik-Goose Bay Road. Not exactly a wheelchair-friendly home or landscape. But he owns it and says that’s the only reason the four of them aren’t on the streets.

To stay busy, he’s rigged up a pulley system so he can lift himself up on an old frontloader he uses to clear snow from his property and do general maintenance on his five acres. He had hoped to build a house there, but that’s out of the question now.

If his disability was the only story, perhaps we could’ve chalked him to the hundreds we can’t write about. That isn’t the case.

He represents thousands out there who are not only physically challenged, but are poor and lack the resources to get the medical attention they need. Not only that, he was successfully sued by his hospital for $36,000.

He and his family live off disability checks and their Permanent Fund dividends. He says he has $64 a month left in disposable income that allows him to pay about $5 per month to each of entities he owes. None are credit cards.

Here’s an otherwise healthy 54-year-old guy with no legs who has to come up with $36,000 plus his modest regular living expenses and no real way to make money. Just getting by is a full-time job.

This is how we, as a community, a state and a nation, treat our wounded: He was dropped by Medicaid because his Social Security benefits were $28 a month too much to qualify.

Maybe if he would put his wife or one of the children out, the benefits would go down and he could afford to take better care of himself and the remaining family.