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Vietnam is a country in constant motion. Without a good set of wheels, it’s easy to get left behind. That’s especially true for Vietnamese wheelchair riders like Quan Dien. He lost his legs in the war with Cambodia in the early 1980s.

“I fell once, because the ramp to the sidewalk was blocked,” he tells FRONTLINE/World reporter Marjorie McAfee. “I was going too fast, and the wheelchair hit and I flew forward.”

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Because the streets of his neighborhood aren’t wheelchair friendly, Quan mostly stays home in his small apartment. To make ends meet, he rents his back room workshop to another wheelchair rider, Thanh Giang, who contracted polio as a child.

“Vietnam still has a lot of shortcomings,” Thanh says. “They haven’t yet been able to find a way to improve things for disabled people. Usually, when they build things, they don’t think if it’s convenient for anyone. So, disabled people put up with a lot of difficulties.”

But a world away, there’s a new wheelchair, and it’s making an impact.

“I can hit it hard, and nothing happens,” says Ralf Hotchkiss, an engineering professor at San Francisco State who’s been thinking about wheelchair design for a long time.

“The wheel’s axels are very strong. You can come down a high curb, hit hard,” he demonstrates. “Nothing fails. This wheel – there’s no way I can break it.”

After becoming paralyzed in a motorcycle accident 30 years ago, Hotchkiss started out just trying to make a better wheelchair for his own use. But he ended up making a bigger breakthrough with something he calls the RoughRider.

“It was necessary to come up with the RoughRider because there was no other wheelchair that worked well enough in all of the difficult situations in developing countries,” he explains. “Everything you do you have to go long distances over rocky or sandy or muddy roads.”

Hotchkiss gathered design ideas from around the world. The front wheel comes from a shopping cart in Zimbabwe.

“Very flexible, very light. Made out of auto tire retread rubber,” he says.

After years of tinkering, Hotchkiss decided the RoughRider was ready for the rigors of the developing world. In 2006, he approached a factory owner named Toan Nguyen to talk about producing the wheelchairs in Vietnam.

“I saw that two people from the opposite sides of an ocean could meet to make this wheelchair,” Toan says.

Toan makes the RoughRider using locally available materials and inexpensive labor. It’s Hotchkiss’ visions that the RoughRider should be easy and cheap to make any place in the world. His associate, Marc Krizack, travels to Vietnam to check in with Toan whenever he can.

“It’s been how long, one year since I was here?” he says as he greets Toan.

He’s brought the latest innovation from San Francisco with him, a design modification that will allow for a smaller-sized wheelchair. As always, there’s no charge for design. Hotchkiss’ technologies are open source. And his Whirlwind Wheelchair Network also helps raise money from Western foundations to help the $175 cost of the chair.

“Wheelchair users don’t make the market – they can’t afford to buy their own wheelchairs,” says Krizack. “So what Whirlwind does is not only just transfer the technology to factories like Kien Tuong, but we also market the chairs. We try to raise the money so they can actually sell the chairs.

With Whirlwind’s help, Toan regularly donates his RoughRiders to those most in need. McAfee finds him at a disabled athletes tournament giving away chairs to the participants, including Thanh Giang, the man from Quan’s workshop.

“When it comes to competing, the wheelchair is very comfortable,” Thanh says. “It doesn’t block my arm movement.”

After the game, Thanh takes a ride through the neighborhood. He says it’s very sturdy and stable. Thanh’s landlord and friend, Quan, is more skeptical. He thinks his old chair suits him better.

“For me to get up in this chair, it’s very easy,” he says about his old chair. “Getting in and out of the RoughRider is impossible. I tried it. I’m not strong enough to push myself up from the ground with my hands.”

“The first rule of the wheelchair provision is ‘Do no harm,’” says Klizack. “You can give someone a wheelchair and it can be a very inappropriate wheelchair. It’d be like, you know, giving somebody a little sports car. Even if it’s the best Mercedes Benz sports car in the world, if the person lives in Alaska in the wintertime, they’re never going be able to use that.”

Klizack heard about Quan’s concerns, so he decides to pay him a visit, bringing Toan along as well. It out Quan got his first chair from Toan more than 20 years ago.

“Meeting again, it’s very emotional,” Toan says.

Quan explains that the RoughRider’s footrests are of no use to him, as he has lost his legs. Klizack says that the wheelchair is designed to be easily modified. Within minutes, they’ve raised the footrests to create a step. And they find another benefit – the footrests also can be used to carry groceries and the like. Quan decides to keep the chair after all.

For Hotchkiss, it’s been the same story all over the world. He’s brought the RoughRider to dozens of countries, including Mexico, Iraq and South Africa through partnerships with several factories abroad.

“I would like to see Whirlwind Wheelchair become unnecessary as soon as possible,” Hotchkiss says. “I would like to help to develop a self-sustaining competitive industry of wheelchair building all over the world. Once the marketplace is populated, hopefully by then there will be so many people working on and inventing wheelchairs, making wheelchairs better than ever, that maybe in 10, 20, 30 years we won’t even recognize today’s chairs. They’ll be history.”

era_vietnam_china_largeDuring a recent trip to Hong Kong to attend the ERA 2007 Asia Conference, eighteen ERA members, staff and family spent a very wet day on a bus traveling to the city of Guangzhou to participate in a wheelchair distribution.

The Guangzhou Charity Federation arranged to deliver some 40 wheelchairs to a facility that assists children with intellectual and physical disabilities.  The wheelchairs were part of a 350-wheelchair donation that was provided by the ERA for residents of Guangzhou, and pushed the number of wheelchairs provided worldwide by the ERA to over 2,500 in just over one year.

ERA President and CEO Barbara Tulipane spoke on behalf of the ERA at the distribution ceremony which was attended by Wheelchair Foundation chairman Ken Behring and a group of supporters that he brought with him from Hawaii.

The ERA group was invited to a wonderful lunch hosted by the Guangzhou Charity Federation, and then traveled north to visit the primary factory that supplies wheelchairs distributed worldwide by the Wheelchair Foundation.  Either by complete coincidence, or very smart planning on the factory managers part, the wheelchairs that were being assembled were the ERA logo emblazoned ones slated for distribution in South Africa several weeks later.  The group was very impressed with the quality, capacity, efficiency and cleanliness of the facility.

Several days later Steve Pittendrigh, Founder and CEO of InPulse Response Group, its President Lee Swanson, his wife Kathie and Electronic Retailer magazine publisher Gina Mullins-Cohen traveled to Vietnam to help distribute 260 wheelchairs sponsored by InPulse Response Group and their new parent company West Corporation.

The trip to Vietnam was the first for all of the attendees except for Lee Swanson.  He was returning for the first time since being stationed in Vietnam some 38 years ago as an army lieutenant.  This was quite a different reason to be interacting with the people of Vietnam.  Lee and Steve jumped right in when people started arriving to receive their new wheelchairs.  If carrying or lifting was needed, Lee and Steve were the first ones there.  During the seating process and the speeches by the host organization (SAPP) and our distribution partner Roger Ferrell of Kid First Vietnam, it was clear to everyone there that Lee was enjoying this visit.  Lee spoke to the audience of wheelchair recipients, family members and dignitaries about the positive feeling he had in just being there, and there was enthusiastic applause welcoming him and our team as friends of the people in need.  The team received an equal welcome from an 81-year-old veteran of the French war who was wearing his military decorations on his pajamas when we arrived at his home.  As it turned out, his wife had been unable to walk for many years, but his hip injury was very recent.  Now the new wheelchair will be used by both husband and wife for their mobility needs.

The team traveled north to the city of Hue, situated near the banks of the Perfume River.  This beautiful city was our gathering point prior to visiting the Kids First Village in Dong Ha and homes of people in need of wheelchairs.

The distribution of wheelchairs at the Kids First Village resulted in great stories being told of new lives ahead because of the wheelchairs.  The newly designed mountain bike tires on the wheelchairs allowed for great speeds to be achieved during several wheelchair sprints across the terrace. An 18-year-old man told us that now he could try to find work somewhere in the field of computers.  It was believed by several in attendance that his physical disabilities since birth were a genetic result of the chemical remnants of war in the region.

On the way back from Dong Ha the team was allowed to enter a Vietnamese veterans cemetery and memorial.  It is a place of peaceful meditation for many visitors in the course of a week, month or year.  But to the observers of Lee Swanson it was a reflective time in a place that he felt very strongly about visiting.  The events of the previous days allowed Lee to connect on a very human level with people that suffered the struggles of immobility in their lives until his group arrived to change all that.  The gratitude and happiness in the eyes of the wheelchair recipients and their families told Lee, Kathie, Steve and Gina that gestures of peace and friendship need no translation or explanation.  It is tempting to be selfish and hold onto the handshakes and hugs for longer than they last, but the truth is that there are more to be had every time we reach out and change the life of a person and family in need of mobility.

Jerry Yahiro wants to return to the Vietnamese highlands where he led a mortar platoon almost 40 years ago.

Rich Vannucci wants to see former battlefields in the country he briefly set foot on as a sailor almost five decades ago.

A former sailor, John Reese, was spurred to return by a mission of peace and good will, instead of war and destruction.

On Friday, these and six other veterans, all Bay Area residents, will travel back to Vietnam, to a country they last saw in war. Their journey will take them not only across an ocean but back in time to a place that, for better or worse, most of them never forgot.

“I’m sure that everybody’s a little bit spooked by the thing and antsy about it, but they’re all anxious to face their demons, so to speak,” said real estate broker and trip organizer Mike Weber of Viet Nam Veterans of Diablo Valley. “There’s great motivation to go do this.”

That’s largely because the trip is more than an opportunity to revisit Vietnam and make peace with the past. During their 13-day trip, the veterans will help hand out 560 wheelchairs, bought in large part with money the veterans raised, to disabled Vietnamese.

During the past two years, the group raised $22,000 to buy wheelchairs. The Danville-based nonprofit Wheelchair Foundation, founded by Blackhawk resident and Seattle Seahawks owner Ken Behring, matched that amount and organized the purchase and distribution of the wheelchairs.

The veterans also raised about $3,500 to distribute to Vietnamese youth shelters and orphanages. Veterans also plan to bring toiletries and school supplies for the shelters and orphanages.

For at least some of the nine veterans who are returning to Vietnam for the first time, the chance to contribute to the well-being of the Vietnamese people overcame their wariness.

“I think this trip, being that we’re going back doing something good, overwhelms all the bad memories I have,” said Yahiro, 62, a Pacific Bell retiree and former Army captain.

Last week, as the group’s departure date approached, the Danville resident still worried that the trip would resurrect traumatic memories of combat. Yet he was willing to take that chance.

“I want to see the country,” said Yahiro, who hopes to visit Montagnards, an ethnic minority in Vietnam’s highlands and wartime ally of the United States. “I want to meet the people (and) see if there are any demons I have left that need to be put to bed.”

For Vannucci, who spent about seven weeks in Vietnam in 1959 while serving aboard the aircraft carrier USS Ranger, the trip is a chance to learn more about a war that claimed the lives of some 58,000 U.S. military personnel and wounded about 300,000.

The retired Navy master chief was in Vietnam when the first U.S. troops were killed in action. When he returns, the military history buff wants to learn more about how North Vietnam defeated its enemies, including the French forces that fought there before the United States.

“I want to see how Gen. Giap was able to bring down the French and essentially bring down the United States,” the 69-year-old Castro Valley resident said, referring to North Vietnam’s commander in chief.

Not everyone in the veterans group wanted to go back to Vietnam. Some feared that the trip would let loose haunting memories that they have managed to bar behind closed doors.

Even among those who decided to brave the trip, some were concerned about the reception they would receive, said Weber, who first returned to Vietnam in 2003 on a wheelchair mission and is returning again Friday.

Weber reassured the group that Vietnamese, even those directly affected by the war, treat returning veterans without animosity and usually greet them warmly. On Weber’s first trip, for instance, a Vietnamese woman dining with him mentioned that American forces killed her father.

“We had kind of an awkward moment, and I didn’t give her any kind of response to that; I just hushed,” said the 58-year-old Blackhawk resident and former Army medic. “Pretty soon, she said: ‘Well, that was then and this is now, and let’s enjoy the lunch.’”

If there was anxiety amid the group of veterans, who will be joined on the trip by five traveling companions and two charity representatives, it didn’t show when they met last week at Weber’s home to plan for the journey.

The mood was jovial as the group nibbled appetizers, sipped drinks and sorted out logistics details such as the group’s six-city itinerary, what clothing to pack and how their charitable mission would unfold.

Among them was Reese, a former Navy lieutenant junior grade who spent three tours in the war in 1970-74, including serving as a diver who cleared mines.

The 58-year-old Walnut Creek resident, whose ailments include post-traumatic stress disorder, was concerned that the trip could aggravate his physical and psychological conditions. But he and his doctors agreed that the peaceful journey would be healing.

“I’m just pleased to go back for a different reason,” Reese said. “To go back and do something valuable in a country that we fought in is extremely special.”

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Dogen Hannah covers the military and the home front. Reach him at 925-945-4794 or dhannah@cctimes.com.