CRESTLINE — Life is pretty stress-free in the Vogt household these days, at least by comparison.
When retired U.S. Army Capt. Nick Vogt wakes up in the morning, he no longer worries about maneuvering his wheelchair down a hallway that’s too narrow. He brushes his teeth at a sink that is the correct height for the chair, and cooks in an oven with French doors to maneuver more easily – well, theoretically anyway.
Nick’s life has been made exponentially easier thanks to the Gary Sinise Foundation, who gifted the Vogt family a specially-adapted smart home so Nick can have the accessibility he needs to be independent. Since the official presentation on July 13, Nick, his wife Lauren and their 18-month-old son Nathan have been busy turning the house into a home.
“It sounds selfish, but it’s pretty amazing how quickly now I don’t appreciate things that used to annoy me all the time, because they’ve disappeared,” Nick said. “It’s a lot like having Lasik eye surgery; initially you’re amazed you don’t have to put your contacts in, but within a week it’s your new normal.”
“I think it’s because we could finally relax,” Lauren added. “We’re not thinking about the annoyances anymore.”
Nick had to adapt to a new normal after a devastating injury he sustained during a deployment to Afghanistan in 2011. On Nov. 12 of that year, Nick was serving as a platoon leader and leading his team on foot patrol when they discovered a weapons cache. While investigating, Nick stepped on an improvised explosive device (IED) and it exploded on impact.
He was immediately rushed to Kandahar, Afghanistan for treatment and was later transported to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for extensive surgeries. Nick lost both legs at the hip, suffered severe brain injury, and was diagnosed with a seizure disorder.
It was during his recovery at Walter Reed that Nick first met Lauren, in June of 2013.
“I was in the Navy as a nurse, and I got stationed at Walter Reed hospital where Nick was recovering,” Lauren said. “I met him about a year and a half after his injury; he had to get re-admitted and I was his nurse.”
The couple was engaged by 2014 and married in 2015. Baby Nathan arrived in February 2017.
But another monumental event in the Vogts’ lives happened on July 31, 2016, when they received a phone call from Gary Sinise himself saying their application to receive a house from his foundation had been accepted. The actor started the foundation in 2011 as part of his efforts to serve and honor the nation’s veterans, a connection that was strengthened after his portrayal of Lt. Dan Taylor, a fictional combat veteran who also lost his legs in wartime, in the 1994 film “Forrest Gump.”
The Vogts worked with a program within the Gary Sinise Foundation called R.I.S.E. – Restoring Independence, Supporting Empowerment. The program provides specially-adapted smart homes to severely wounded veterans and first responders in an effort to provide some semblance of normalcy to their lives again.
In June of 2017, the Vogt family moved from Arlington, Virginia back to Richland County to live with Nick’s parents while their new home was being built right next door, on land that has been in the Vogt family for generations. The new house sits on the border of Crestline and Shelby, in the small Catholic community known as the Shelby Settlement where Nick spent his childhood before going to West Point in 2006.
“We knew we were going to have one kid, and figured we’re going to have more, and when you’re in a wheelchair it’s tough to help with things like that,” Nick said. “Besides the kid stuff, when you’re a wheelchair and you can’t drive, it puts a lot more chores on the other spouse. Having a good support group with my family was important, and just the Shelby Settlement group itself, having that we knew it was going to take some pressure off Lauren.”
“I come from cookie-cutter suburbia, so this is really different for me but I really love it,” said Lauren, a native of San Diego, California. “The whole community has rallied behind Nick from day one.”
Living next-door to the construction site allowed Nick and Lauren to be heavily involved in the process of designing and planning their new home.
“We were super involved the whole time,” Lauren said. “We could come over all the time and talk about where things should go.”
An official groundbreaking for the house was held in September 2017, and the house was officially unveiled on July 13. The Gary Sinise Foundation has completed over 48 homes across the United States, out of 66 total projects that are either completed or in-progress, and many projects are completed with the help of local contractors.
“It’s like the community’s house,” Lauren said. “Lots of local people worked on the house and many of them donated their time.”
The simple tasks of everyday life – climbing stairs, reaching a high shelf, getting in and out of the bathroom – are easy to take for granted. Because they’re done without a second thought, it’s impossible to imagine an inability to perform them. Even something as simple as hardwood floors made life a lot easier for Nick.
“When you’re on carpet and you have to do a complete 180-turn, it’s annoying because it takes work and it tears up the carpet over time,” Nick said. “Now I just cruise throughout the house.”
The design of the shower was especially important for Nick – because of the nature of his injury, he spends most of his time lying down, so the shower was built with a 4×6 foot platform for Nick to lay on with a handheld shower head within reach.
“The bathroom was one of the few things I needed in this exact way for the house, where I can just lay down and relax,” Nick said. “And I know in the future when I get older and it’s tougher to transition in and out of the wheelchair, I’ll still be able to access that easily.”
Some features of the house the Vogts hadn’t even thought of, like lighting and security systems controlled via an iPad or iPhone to keep from needing get up and down to turn lights on and off, or lock doors. The sinks are lower, the oven has a French door so Nick doesn’t have to lean over an open oven in the wheelchair, and the microwave is in a drawer.
Even something as simple as a fence in the backyard allows for more independence for Nick, especially with a toddler and a chubby beagle named Ike. When he’s alone at the house, Nick can lounge on the back patio and watch as his son safely collects rocks and dirt to present with pride to his father.
But despite all its other cool features, the hallways in the house are still a huge selling point.
“One of the first few days in the house we walked past each other in the hallway, and we had to stop and appreciate that we were standing next to each other in a hallway,” Lauren said with a laugh. “That never happens.”
“I still enjoy it when I wake up,” Nick said. “I can easily go throughout the house. There’s a feeling of peace in the back of my mind.”
