Profiles in resiliency captured
Millbury native’s father, friend inspire new book
Craig S. Semon
Worcester Telegram & Gazette USA TODAY NETWORK
MILLBURY – When he was searching for inspiration to overcome one of life’s hurdles, Millbury native Christopher Richards found it in two people – his father, Lawrence L. Richards, a Vietnam War veteran, who died on April 9 at 78; and his close friend, Steven R. Bott, who suffered a serious industrial injury at the former Norton Co. in Worcester.
Chris’ personal journey of resilience, resourcefulness, persistence and community is the focus of his new book, “Nothing So Broken: A Memoir,” which also doubles as a historic document of the Vietnam War experience.
Winner of the Literary Titan Book Award for Nonfiction and former top seller in Amazon’s Vietnam War book category, “Nothing So Broken: A Memoir” juxtaposes the real life of these two men, as well as the turning point in their respective lives.
In the spring of 1967, Lawrence Richards was drafted into the U.S. Army and served a tour in Vietnam in 1968, stationed at the Eighth Radio Research Station in Phu Bai. According to his son, his father was exposed to Agent Orange during his service and faced long-term health challenges as a result.
Thirty-five years ago, on Oct. 26, 1990, Bott fell 50 feet from scaffolding at work, which left him with severe brain and spinal cord injuries and in a coma for six weeks. When he awoke, Bott was paralyzed on his right side and could not speak for six months. Surgeons at UMass Memorial Medical Center – University Campus put his broken body back together before sending him to The Greenery in Boston for rehabilitation. In 1991, Bott moved to Fairlawn Rehabilitation Hospital. After completing his rehabilitation, Bott volunteered
at Fairlawn and the Millbury Nursing Home.
“I grew up with him and my father and watched them both struggle. I was 19 when he (Bott) had his accident,” Chris said. “My father started showing signs of Agent Orange poisoning and also PTSD. So it kind of shaped my life.”
Before his injury, Bott was a star guard on the 1986 Millbury High School basketball team, which made it to the state finals. Two years older, Bott helped Chris make the junior varsity team in basketball when he was a freshman.
“We grew up in the same neighborhood on Elm Court and I was OK as an athlete, but he was really good,” Chris recalled. “Going into my freshman year, we started playing one-on-one. Playing with him was like playing with a big brother. I didn’t have a big brother. And he got me so much better that I made the team and then we became very close after that.”
After graduating from Millbury High School, Chris went on to WPI and became an engineer.
“I had this goal to try to help people. I think very much because of what I saw them going through. They were disabled,” Chris said. “My father was probably 40 when he really started showing symptoms. He hid it really well for a while. And Steven was 21 when things fell apart for him.”
Chris went on to live his life as an engineer until he got injured in his mid-30s, he said.
“I hurt my hip. I didn’t think it was anything major…I don’t know if it was an old injury or something but it just never got better. It just kept getting worse and worse and worse,” Chris said. “Long story short, I couldn’t fix it and it ended my career as an engineer. It derailed my life. I couldn’t sit. And I was having problems standing, and it blew up into this thing I never thought it would be. And all of a sudden, I’m disabled and I’m like, 37, 38 years old. And I go, what the hell do I do? What now?”
Chris went through two surgeries and injections before doctors concluded that it was “a soft tissue injury” with no foreseeable remedy in sight. In other words, he had to grin and bear it.
Someone suggested that he started writing. And from there, Chris looked inside himself to find what inspires him.
“I looked at my father, and I looked at Steven, and I said, they’re going through much, much worse than anything I’m dealing with,” Chris said. “Steven is doing all of this philanthropy work and he’s playing with the kids (volunteering as a basketball coach). And my father was basically holding Vietnam back at bay from his community and his family. He had been such a good dad and was a great person, even though he was clearly tortured and clearly sick from the age of 21 on. I’m going to write about these two guys because they inspire me and that helped me get through with my hip injury.”
In addition to hoping that the book gives people a better understanding what America’s Vietnam War veterans went through abroad and when they came back, Chris hopes “Nothing So Broken: A Memoir” inspires others not to give up, despite what hardships life might have dealt them.
For Chris, now the development director of Pocasset Pokanoket Land Trust, the underlying theme in the book is resiliency, a lesson he learned from watching his father and his best friend.
“Every now and then, life just hits you and breaks you and you’re left with the wreckage. There are no plans. You’ve lost your identity. And then, it’s kind of like, what do you do now?” Chris said. “These guys I think are two ordinary people under extraordinary circumstances and they provide a model or, at least, you see how they handled it.”
With the help of Bott, who knows a thing or two about being charitable (he’s usually one of the T&G Santa Fund’s largest individual donors), Chris is honoring his dad’s memory by donating all proceeds to nonprofit organizations and charities, including Friends of the Millbury Public Library, Brain Injury Association of America, Millbury High School Youth Programs and Veterans Inc.
The book is available online at Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and locally at Annie’s Book Stop, 65 James St., Worcester; A Great Notion, 65 Southbridge St., Auburn; and Tide Pool Bookshop, 372 Chandler St., Worcester.
