Friday, July 28, 2000 | 10:19 a.m.
As a teenager, Mike Stern was too small to compete in track events such as the shot put, discus and javelin, so he ran the 100-yard dash and did the long jump.
Forty years later, the severely wounded Vietnam veteran competed in his first athletic event since his youth -- the National Veterans Wheelchair Games earlier this month in San Antonio. Ironically, he won gold medals in the paraplegic novice shot put, discus and javelin.
"Now all things are equal -- we are all sitting down," said Stern, 59, who has been invited to participate in a U.S. team trial event for a chance to compete in the Para-Olympics in Sydney, Australia, two weeks after the upcoming Olympics there.
"One of the guys I competed against in the discus had biceps the size of a small waist, but I beat him by three meters. For me, these Games were a chance to test myself -- to see if I could still compete. I did not have expectations of winning any medals. But now I'm hooked. I'll gladly compete again next year."
Stern, a retired magistrate and lawyer from Virginia, and five other local men made history at the July 4-8 Games as the first squad to represent Nevada.
The Nevada Paralyzed Veterans Association team won 11 gold medals, two silvers and one bronze -- a remarkable accomplishment by such a small squad in the 20th annual Games that featured 700 competitors from the United States and Puerto Rico.
Stern, a resident of Searchlight for 10 years, served in the Army Special Forces during the Vietnam War, earning the Silver Star, Bronze Star and Purple Heart. In the early 1970s he was wounded outside Kontoon and has been in a wheelchair ever since.
Although he exercised throughout his life to keep his muscles toned, Stern did not compete in para-athletic events. Earlier this year fellow local PVA member Dan Kaminski introduced Stern to the air gun -- one of the most popular events among wheelchair veterans -- and talked him into joining the newly formed Nevada team.
Stern won a fourth gold medal in novice paraplegic air gun. Kaminski also won an air gun gold medal in the quadriplegic division and joined a multistate quad rugby team that won a silver medal.
"For each event I won, some old general presented me with a gold medal, but when Dan finished second in rugby, Miss America gave him the silver," Stern said. "She even sat on his lap and kissed him on the cheek. Some guys have all the luck."
Kaminski, a 43-year-old resident of Las Vegas for the last 11 years and a veteran of the Navy, says he hasn't washed those pants or his cheek since Heather French, the former Miss Kentucky and reigning Miss America, gave him his award.
Kaminski also was athletic in high school, participating in basketball and football. But he, too, did not become a disabled athlete until years after he was severely injured in a motorcycle accident en route to his military job.
"My recreational therapist, Kelly Kal, suggested that I get into athletics and she introduced me to her husband (a paraplegic athlete) who taught me about quad rugby. I loved it."
The game is played on a wooden floor with rules similar to the outdoor game only modified for wheelchairs. Last year, as a member of the Arizona PVA squad, Kaminski, won a gold medal in quad rugby. Kaminski also coaches and plays for the Las Vegas High Rollers quad rugby team.
Getting a Nevada squad together for the National Veterans Wheelchair Games had been a longtime goal of 75-year-old Kenny Rogers, who was competing in that event for the seventh time. Rogers moved to Las Vegas in 1996 and had to compete for his old Ohio squad the last three years because Nevada had no PVA chapter.
"There was a desire to get a team together here the last two years," said Rogers, a Navy veteran and former professional ice skater. "But it takes a lot of work and money. It costs about $1,000 to send each athlete to the Games."
The money was raised through yard sales, private donations and funding from the national and local PVA, which earlier this year moved from a temporary office at the Nevada chapter of the Wheelchair Veterans of America building to its own permanent offices at 1630 Sunset Drive.
"I was proud to see the Nevada flag flying for the first time during the Games' opening ceremonies," said Rogers, who in 1975 broke his back while working as a ski patrolman at Mammoth Mountain in the Sierras.
Once ranked No. 2 in the nation for disabled air gun competitors, Rogers won a silver medal in the paraplegic masters division in that event at the recent Games. He also won swimming gold medals in the 100-yard backstroke and 100-yard freestyle.
"The Games have grown tremendously," he said, noting there were just 350 competitors in 1994 compared to twice that number this year.
"However, it is discouraging that there were only about five of us World War II veterans there. I will keep competing until I'm no longer competitive. I see myself doing this when I'm 80 as long as my health holds up.
Also at the recent Games, Cedric Arinwine won golds in quad weightlifting and the slalom and a bronze in quad rugby, and Lee O'Brien won golds in paraplegic 50-yard freestyle and 50-yard backstroke swimming. Stanley Stavinski rounded out the Nevada team by competing in table tennis, manual bowling and 9-ball.
The potential for growth of both the Nevada PVA and its future disabled athletic squads is encouraging, says Steve Williams, office manager for the Nevada PVA.
"Of the 250,000 veterans in the state, we estimate there are 700-800 disabled veterans -- about 500 of them in the Las Vegas area," Williams said. "This organization is only about a year old and already has more than 100 members."
And there are plenty of competitions for disabled athletes.
Mark Fenn, who recently moved to Las Vegas and joined the local PVA, has qualified for the U.S. team in the discus at the Para-Olympics in Sydney.
Rogers is competing this weekend in the California State Air Gun Championship in Fresno and will compete in the Nevada Senior Games. Nevada PVA President Lupo Quitoriano plans to compete in the upcoming National Trapshooting Tour championship in South Dakota.
Stern, Kaminski and Rogers say they are proud to be para-athletes because it helps dispel misconceptions that people in wheelchairs are nonproductive.
"We spend more energy getting up in the morning, getting dressed and doing other chores to get ready for the day than many people do in an entire day," Kaminski said.
Stern said the worst part about being in a wheelchair is not the confinement but "dealing with inconsiderate people who think that we cannot function in any way because we cannot walk. But we are not helpless."
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