Manchester Essex Seniors Jagger Nowak, Cam Light, Owen Bappe, Naderson Curtis, Gus Brown, Eli Cox, Jackson Cawley, Anton Westrick and Theo Brown are pictured with Massachusetts Veteran, Sgt. Brandon Korona at local non-profit Stairs4RTroops' 7th event at Gillette Stadium which raises money to build specially adapted mortgage free homes for severely injured veterans. The seniors volunteered 90 hours of hours of community service to S4RT this year and local business, Harbor Consulting Inc., sponsored their team, Hornets 4 R Troops. Sgt. Korona's vehicle was struck by an IED during his first deployment to Afghanistan as a combat engineer with the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division. The explosion knocked Brandon unconscious, breaking his right ankle and every bone below his left knee. Brandon spent two years recovering at Walter Reed Medical Center before returning home to Massachusetts. After four years of pain and a low quality of life trying to keep his left leg, Brandon made the difficult decision to have doctors amputate his lower left leg. He opted for an experimental surgical procedure called an Ewing Amputation at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He is the second person to undergo this amputation surgery, which gives him the ability to control a robotic prosthetic with his brain, enabling him to perform complex actions and feel sensations. Sgt. Korona recently moved into his Home For Our Troops home and was one of the veterans to benefit from S4RT's event this year.
