Chuck Lee served the U.S. military for nine years, in Panama, the Persian Gulf and Iraq.

He returned home in 1997, still fighting.

“My injuries you can’t see. Mine are all internal,” he said.

The Brown County man has been working with a Trafalgar company to help disabled veterans like him get back into nature and their daily routines.

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They’re building vehicles called Tracked Utility Carriers, or TUCs. It’s a combination of a skid steer and a utility tractor, designed to specifications of disabled people. It’s operated using a joystick.

Together, they’re looking to raise money to get six Brown County veterans into TUCs through their Tracks4Vets program. They’re working with community foundations in Brown, Morgan and Johnson counties to take donations.

There are 88,170 disabled veterans in Indiana alone, according to the National Center for Veterans Analysis and Statistics.

Lee began serving with the United States Army in the 82nd Airborne in 1988, and completed his training as an Army Ranger. He was deployed to Panama and the Gulf War.

After his deployment, he enlisted with the U.S. Army National Guard and served from 1993 to 1997. He served a total of nine years, including in Iraq, before retiring in 1997 on full disability due to his time as a paratrooper and being exposed to environmental toxins while serving overseas.

Once home, Lee suffered from degenerative arthritis in his legs, along with other physical and emotional symptoms. He had multiple surgeries, was bedridden at the Mayo Clinic for five years, and was diagnosed with Stage 4 liver disease.

“I’ve been working on writing a book called ‘Ghost of a Soldier,’ because overseas, we know who we’re fighting. We know our enemies and we know their tactics. When you come home and you’ve been exposed to environmental toxins or chemical agents, you don’t know from one day to the next what’s going to change or what’s going to alter in your system,” Lee said.

“It’s like fighting a ghost. You can’t see it.”

Lee said those ghost enemies contribute to high suicide rates among those who serve our country.

Every day, 20 veterans take their own lives, according to the United States Department of Veterans Affairs.

“They just can’t see what they’re fighting, and they don’t have the tactics to fight it or the knowledge to fight it because we’ve never been trained on it,” he said.

“This,” he said as he pointed to the TUC prototype, “getting guys outdoors, it did for me. It got me outdoors. It got me to where I had a purpose and a passion. I wanted to give back.”

Back to work

Lee began working with Ring-Co, a design manufacturing company in Trafalgar, about two-and-a-half years ago. He now works as Ring-Co’s director of veteran affairs.

Lee and Ring-Co don’t want veterans or first responders to have to pay for these machines, which is why they are relying on fundraising through Tracks4Vets.com.

“If they are injured or have PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and they have property and want to be able to manage their own, they deserve to have one of these chairs,” Lee said.

Lee received an all-terrain chair through the Independence Fund, a nonprofit serving disabled veterans, in the early 2000s. “It opened up doors, because it got me out and did what it was supposed to do,” he said.

Before he had that chair, Lee was mobile with the help of a cane or a wheelchair. His wife would help him get up and dressed in the mornings before heading out to work for almost 12 hours. She would return home to clean the house, take care of their children and do work outside on their 100-acre farm.

“I am sitting in the house. I can’t work. I’m down,” Lee said.

“You sit there and watch her do that, it doesn’t make you feel like a man. It makes you feel useless. … I ain’t going to lie … if it wasn’t for my wife, I probably wouldn’t be here right now. She’s my backbone and these guys (Ring-Co) are, too.”

The all-terrain chair Lee received from the Independence Fund was not designed for country living, however. The chair would overheat going up hills and was battery-powered, so it could only go about a half mile on country terrain before needing to be charged again.

The United States Department of Veterans Affairs provides medical indoor motorized chairs with wheels, not tracks. “That gets you from Point A to Point B, to go to the doctor or go to the grocery store,” Lee said.

“They (the VA) don’t do anything like this. But I am trying to get them to.”

Lee has visited Washington, D.C., to speak with the VA Congressional Task Force and met with then-senior adviser for Veterans Affairs under President Donald Trump, Jake Leinenkugel.

He also has met with U.S. Representative Pete Sessions, R-Texas.

“We’re working with his office right now to come up with a program for veterans in Texas. I am trying to do that here with Indiana,” Lee said.

He will be meeting with the head of prosthetics at the Indiana VA.

“We’re going to talk about trying to figure out a plan to get these in. Since Trump passed that new (veteran treatment) bill for alternative treatment, this (TUC) falls into that,” Lee said.

“These are made for all of it: Recreation, work, utility, you name it. You can do anything on these. It is a utility vehicle, so it’s made to work.”

It also can take veterans or other users beyond their own yards.

Lee said Camp Moneto has designed a trail just for TUCs, veterans and their families who want to use it. Ring-Co has partnered with veteran suicide awareness group Mission 22, which is donating a life-size steel silhouette of a veteran for the trailhead. A plaque also will be placed explaining Ring-Co’s mission.

“I personally, and they (Ring-Co) want to, too, take these across the United States. To Colorado, Montana, Utah. … Somebody that’s never been in the back woods or the Rocky Mountains or the Smokies, or wherever, now have the opportunity to be able to do it,” Lee said.

Giving a purpose

When Lee heard about Ring-Co, he decided to take his all-terrain chair over to see if there was anything they could to improve it and make it more outdoor friendly.

“I’d been doing this for about eight years, running around, just trying to find the right people (to manufacture these),” Lee said.

That’s when he met founders Tricia and Chad Ringer. Tricia serves as the company’s CEO and Chad is the president.

“He said, ‘Can you make it (the chair) better?’” Tricia Ringer said.

“We said, ‘No, but we can make something completely different.’ Our goal with any product, person, process is to improve it. We thought, ‘Why not take this thing and beef it up so that people can actually work with it?’ Because getting out in the woods is great, and getting out into nature is great, but really being able to give back, it’s that work that gives us purpose.”

Chad Ringer designed the TUC. It’s built to order at their Trafalgar shop.

Lee said many veterans isolate themselves, and getting them back outdoors to work is therapeutic.

“You get them outdoors one on one, I have more guys break down on me and tell their story because I was a veteran. It doesn’t even have to be a veteran, they will open up to you. They just want somebody to listen to them. They want somebody to sit there and not say a word and hear their story,” Lee said.

Lee said he knows veterans are returning home and starting hobby farming, micro-farming and other activities like beekeeping.

“This is right up their alley. They can plow, disc, mow, they can just do about anything with this machine that you can do with a small implement tractor, ATV or UTV,” Lee said.

The TUC has a 4,200-pound towing capacity. It has two hitch receptacles in the front and three in the back, and allows for the attachment of tools like plows, brooms, sprayers and trailers.

“It’s something that will age with you. If you have a disease that is deliberating and you know you’re going to grow weaker … even as you can do less, you can still drive it,” Tricia Ringer said.

“You don’t have to have upper body strength or lower body strength. It will age with you, and you will still be able to do what you need to do.”

It has a 23 horsepower gasoline engine, can go up to 5 MPH and has a rollover protection system. Hydraulics allow for smooth take-offs and stops. It also can be remote control-driven through an app available for Android devices. One is in the works for Apple devices.

“You can sit in the house and do it if you wanted to. We tried to make it safe as possible with the top components out on the market,” Lee said.

“If they get on an angle or it gets too steep, the chair recognizes it. It has a sensor in it and it will go into limp mode.”

Lee said the most unique aspect of the TUC is the air-ride seat that moves up and down. “All a guy has to do is slide on in and he’s good. He can take his legs and move them over if he needs to,” Lee said.

The TUC also allows for user to create boundaries or a designated path for the chair. “If you want it to go a certain way and make certain turns, you can do that as well. It is scalable. As things get smarter, it will grow with technology,” Ringer said.

Lee said having a TUC has given him his life back.

“It gives me freedom, a purpose, a passion. I’ll tell you something about veterans: They just want to give back. We’ve seen the worst of the worst. When we come home, we just want to give back and help,” he said.

“That’s all we want to do, but we have to get our help ourselves before we can help somebody else. That’s hard to find.”

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To sponsor a veteran and help pay for a Tracked Utility Carrier, visit Tracks4Vets.com and click on the “Support a Vet” tab. There, you can read veterans’ stories who are in need of a TUC.

The total cost for a TUC is $25,000. It is designed and manufactured by Ring-Co of Trafalgar. For every $25,000 that is received, Ring-Co will donate $2,500 to the Tracks4Vets program. There are six veterans in Brown County who qualify to receive a TUC and a total of 14 in Indiana.

Other ways to donate:

• Click on the GoFundMe account link at tracks4vets.com.
• Make a donation electronically to the Morgan County Community Foundation through tracks4vets.com under the “Donate” tab.
• Send a check made out to the Brown County Community Foundation (P.O. Box 191, Nashville) with “Tracks4Vets” in the memo line.
• Sponsor a TUC using a form at tracks4vets.com.

If you wish to purchase a TUC yourself, you can do so online as well.

Veterans who would like to receive a TUC can visit Tracks4Vets.com to complete a questionnaire and share their story.

Questions: 877-TUC-2470 or [email protected].

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