Climbing Above the Culture Clash

The Veterans’ Veteran:
Kirk Bauer (’78)
Executive Director,
Disabled Sports USA
www.dsusa.org
Kirk Bauer knows first-hand that sports
can help people rebuild lives. After losing a
leg to a grenade injury during the Vietnam
War at age 21, he found a steep downhill
path to recovery when fellow veterans
introduced him to a skiing program run
by Disabled Sports USA (DS/USA).
Bauer reinvented himself as a competitive
ski racer and one of the first fully certified
disabled ski instructors in the country.
Today he is a nationally recognized
advocate for disabled sports, and serves as
vice chair of the President’s Council on
Physical Fitness and Sports. Since 1982
he has spearheaded the growth of DS/
USA into the country’s largest sports and
recreation organization for physically disabled
people, with 100 chapters nationwide.
“I saw the issue of disabled rights as parallel
to civil rights,” said Bauer in a recent
telephone conversation. His training at BU
Law played a key role in his effectiveness
as an advocate and strategist. “I felt that
with a legal education, I could help people
with disabilities move forward,” he said.
In the winter of 2002–03, as the U.S.
invasion of Iraq loomed, Bauer and
colleagues at DS/USA devised a strategy to
offer wounded returning soldiers the same
rehabilitation through sport that had helped
them find new hope in lives torn apart by
injury. Since then, the Wounded Warrior
Disabled Sports Project has served more than
2,500 seriously wounded veterans, providing
free individualized training in many winter
and summer sports, with transportation,
lodging and adaptive equipment.
“The results have even surprised me,” said
Bauer, citing a February 2009 survey by
HarrisInteractive, commissioned by DS/USA,
showing that program participants are twice
as likely to be employed than the general
population of adults with disabilities. “They
are really getting on with life,” he said, adding
that their courage and capacities remind us
that “people with disabilities are people first.”
The Guardsman’s
Neighbor:
Nathaniel Dalton (’91)
Executive Vice President and
Chief Operating Officer,
Affiliated Managers Group
Co-founder and Executive
Board Member,
Guard Support of Massachusetts
www.guardsupport.org
What happens to the families, jobs and
businesses of National Guardsmen and
women when they leave for active service
Nate Dalton, a top executive for the asset
management company Affiliated Managers
Group, had not given the question much
thought until a conversation in 2007 with
his Swampscott neighbor, Michael Finer.
Finer explained to Dalton the challenges
he faced as he prepared to deploy to
Iraq for a year as a lieutenant colonel in
the Massachusetts National Guard.
As president of a financial planning group,
Finer was better placed than many National
Guard colleagues to weather the time
away from his business. But for many selfemployed
workers and small business owners,
deployment can have drastic economic
results, he told Dalton. “These are people
who put their lives on hold to serve us,”
Dalton said. He felt the private sector had a
responsibility to step up and serve them back.
In August 2007, with Finer and other
friends in the legal and business community,
Dalton launched Guard Support, a
nonprofit dedicated to boosting support
services for Massachusetts National
Guard soldiers and their families.
Guard Support aims to plug gaps in
government-provided support, by setting up
a range of services such as giving emergency
cash for child care, housing and utility bills;
setting up Internet connections between
overseas troops and families at home; and
supporting groups that organize moraleboosting
send-off and homecoming events.
A major focus is linking entrepreneurial
veterans with business planning, training
and access to capital to help them
launch or re-launch small businesses.
For Dalton, the most touching aspect of
this homegrown response to a national
emergency is “the level of gratitude from
people to whom we should be grateful.”
Fall 2009 | The Record | 5