Resident Brian Jergens shuffled toward his toddler son in a spacious living room with ample toys.
“Uh oh, Daddy’s coming for you,” said mother, Jennifer Jergens, 22, as the little boy looked up at his six-foot-tall father and beamed ahead.
This would be a typical exchange between a father and son, except that the dad is Hollister resident Brian Jergens, 26, an Army medic sergeant who learned to walk with prosthetics after he returned home from deployment in Afghanistan without legs below the knee.
The Jergens family moved to San Benito County in 2013 after the nonprofit Homes For Our Troops offered to build them a handicapped accessible house in Hollister. Their home with its perfectly manicured lawn and U.S. and Army flags in the front yard looks like any other on the block except for its low windows, wide hallways, lower counters and self-opening doors.
For physical therapy and cardio, Brian Jergens uses a pool 90 minutes away at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System. Now the community is rallying to help install one in his own backyard.
Swimming pool contractor Paul Benedetti has been spearheading the project and had everything from base rock to an automatic pool cover donated until a crucial provider of shotcrete—the sprayed concrete that coats the inside of the pool—dropped out after the business changed ownership. Benedetti is now working to raise $30,000 for shotcrete, pipes, drainage and landscaping for a project with a permit that expires March 15.
“So we were left kind of flapping in the wind,” Benedetti said. “We’re just waiting for the funds to get the money to shoot the concrete.”
On Friday, grey clouds hovered over the backyard where the site of the future swimming pool was a hole 20 feet by 40 feet surrounded by yellow, blossoming mustard plants; tall grass; and trenches.
“More rain for our jungle,” Jennifer Jergens said.
Brian became injured in 2011 when the blast from an improvised explosive device hit the vehicle he was driving and he suffered a severe brain injury, hearing loss, internal organ damage, a broken neck and damage to his right elbow.
“Obviously, it’s a call you never want to hear,” his wife said. “They’re pretty vague.”
He was too injured to move out of the country immediately, so it was a week before Jennifer got to see him. Until then, she called the doctors for updates so frequently that her mother finally suggested she stop so that the physicians would have time to work on Brian and the other patients.
“I was just devastated that he was by himself,” she said.
Benedetti calls her the Army medic’s “guardian angel” because of the way she has stood by him after he was injured overseas.
“They were newly married. He got sent to Afghanistan and then her husband comes back to her not the way she sent him away and she stood by throughout all his recovery and she’s still very supportive of him,” Benedetti said. “Any other person would have said, ‘Forget it. I’m out of here.’”
She is caring for the young couple’s son, Jackson, and is currently working toward a degree in criminal justice through online classes.
“For somebody so young to have such maturity and such strength—I really admire her,” Benedetti said. “She’s been there for him.”
To donate toward the pool, go to fundme.com/en/projects/15656-Build-Sgt–Brian-Jergens-a-Pool.
For more information, go to facebook.com/BuildBrianAPool.
