12/21/2006

Newsmakers 2006

Record-Eagle/Douglas Tesner
Nick Paupore, who served in Iraq with the U.S. Army, lost his leg when he was hit by an explosive while driving a Humvee in northern Iraq. He is back in Traverse City on leave, spending time with his wife, Maria, and their two children, Mailey, 5, and Cody, 9.

TC native recovering from war wounds

Region had its share of casualties in '06

By PATRICK SULLIVAN

psullivan@record-eagle.com

TRAVERSE CITY — Sharon Osborne attended a Beach Bums game that July day when the bad news came in.

"Everybody in my family knew before I did,” Osborne said. "I had gone to a ball game with some of my stepgrandchildren and when I came home everybody was here, and I thought, 'What is going on?'”

Her family gathered at her Honor home because her son, Nick Paupore, 31, a Traverse City native, had been hit by an explosive while driving a Humvee in northern Iraq.

Paupore lost a lot of blood and nearly died, but his life probably was saved by a doctor in his convoy who provided immediate care.

As the toll of war dead and injured mounted in 2006 in Afghanistan and Iraq, so, too, did the casualties among northern Michigan natives.

In Charlevoix, residents mourned the loss of Douglas Sloan, 40, a father of four who was killed Oct. 31 when a bomb struck his vehicle.

Sloan had just been promoted from captain to major in the Army's 10th Mountain Division. A 1985 graduate of Charlevoix High School, he was remembered fondly as a fun-loving troublemaker.

For Paupore's family, the horrible news gradually improved.

Paupore lost a leg but he quickly began to recover and learned to walk.

Paupore, who is in Traverse City on leave this week to visit his young children and family for Christmas, said he walks on a prosthetic leg and uses a cane. Eventually, he hopes to walk without a cane well enough that he'd have to be wearing shorts for someone to notice the artificial leg.

"It's going really good,” Paupore said. "I've made pretty good progress.”

Paupore gives a lot of credit for his progress to his wife, Maria, who moved to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington D.C., to be with him during his recovery.

"We always see progress when he comes home and that's really nice, he's proud of that,” Osborne said. "He's getting very good treatment, and you've got to say something about Vietnam vets because they are responsible for a lot of what is happening for these boys when they come back and they're injured.”

Osborne wasn't pleased when her son decided to join the military, a decision prompted by the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

"He just felt he needed to do it and I had a hard time with that, but that's what he had to do,” Osborne said. "To have him go over there knowing what he was going into was very frightening. Very frightening.”