The first time he noticed something was off, Chuck Schretzman was in Afghanistan.
Then an active lieutenant colonel in the Army, Schretzman was serving the last of four combat tours back in 2011 when he began having trouble with balance. He also developed an issue with his gait and would take an occasional tumble for no apparent reason.
"Toward the end, I started getting off-balance," said Schretzman, the Elk & Elk Military Salutes honoree at the Blue Jackets game Dec. 23 against the Philadelphia Flyers. "It was weird. I was falling down stairs, and I was like, 'I don't know what's going on.' I was falling down and hitting my head."
It would've been strange for any solider to deal with, but especially Schretzman, a lifelong athlete and fitness aficionado. Each time she put Chuck's symptoms into the search engine, the same website kept popping up at the top. It belonged to the national ALS Association, which advocates and lends support for those battling amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), more commonly known as "Lou Gehrig's Disease. "Her pulse quickened. She knew about ALS because it was 2014, and that was the year of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, a fundraising effort that swept across the country and raised millions for ALS research.
One of those donations was made by Stacy Schretzman, who dumped a bucket of icy-cold water over her head, along with their youngest daughter, Chloe. She wrote out a check to help fund research for the disease, which she didn't know much about. » Full Story