A true American hero
It’s a shock every time you see Noah Galloway. And I’ve seen him plenty, on newsstands everywhere.
Fans of Men’s Health know Noah as the cover guy on our November issue. Out of the 1200 men who entered our first Ultimate Men’s Health Guy contest, Noah stood apart, becoming the first reader ever to appear on our cover.
It might seem like an honor for him to get this opportunity, but really, the bigger honor is for us. Noah was one of those stand-up Americans who watched the towers fall on 9/11 and dropped what he was doing—the start of his education at the University of Alabama-Birmingham—and joined 101st Airborne out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky. When he reached Iraq, he found his calling in life.
“I enjoyed every bit of it,” he told us in his cover story. “I spent a year in Iraq living with the locals, on patrol all the time. I was like, ‘This is it, I wanna do this the rest of my life.’”
He nearly lost his life doing what he loved. Noah was driving a Humvee when he ran into a trip wire. It detonated enough explosives to send him and his five-ton truck flying through the air. When he landed, everything changed. He awoke Christmas Day 2005 in Walter Reed Hospital, his jaw wired shut and his mother at his bedside. She delivered the news that he’d lost his left arm and leg in the explosion.
That’s why his image on the cover of Men’s Health is jarring. It’s hard not to focus on what’s missing in the picture. Here is a guy who literally gave an arm and a leg for his country; for you and me. And if it’s hard for us to look it, imagine how it felt for Noah. He’d been a natural athlete, used to pushing himself to the limit. And now he was a tattered remnant of what he’d been.
He fell into a depression, which is no surprise. What is surprising: He fought his way out of it. And he did it by deciding to focus not on how much he’d lost, but how much he still had left.
His inspiring journey to the cover of Men’s Health began when he joined a 24-hour gym, so he could visit early in the morning, when nobody would watch the handicapped guy struggling with his workouts.
"Little surprises kept me going," he told us, in his Alabama drawl. "A little better this day, a little stronger the next. Suddenly it was six months. I was like, 'Man, this is pretty good.'"
Last week, Noah was on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Ellen is among the funniest people alive, but she holstered her humor for that particular segment. You could see she was simply in awe of Noah when he strode out onto her set.
Take a look for yourself, if you missed it.
The audience was similarly impressed; they rose and gave him a lengthy standing ovation. At the end of his interview, Ellen offered to donate 200 bucks to Noah’s charity—The No Excuses Charitable Fund, to battle childhood obesity in Birmingham—for every pushup he could crank out in 20 seconds. I guess they knew he was good for it, because they brought out a giant check for 10 grand right after he finished.
Noah was glowing from the effort when he stood up. One-armed push-ups on national TV are the least of the difficulties he’s had to fight through.
Fans of Men’s Health know Noah as the cover guy on our November issue. Out of the 1200 men who entered our first Ultimate Men’s Health Guy contest, Noah stood apart, becoming the first reader ever to appear on our cover.
It might seem like an honor for him to get this opportunity, but really, the bigger honor is for us. Noah was one of those stand-up Americans who watched the towers fall on 9/11 and dropped what he was doing—the start of his education at the University of Alabama-Birmingham—and joined 101st Airborne out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky. When he reached Iraq, he found his calling in life.
“I enjoyed every bit of it,” he told us in his cover story. “I spent a year in Iraq living with the locals, on patrol all the time. I was like, ‘This is it, I wanna do this the rest of my life.’”
He nearly lost his life doing what he loved. Noah was driving a Humvee when he ran into a trip wire. It detonated enough explosives to send him and his five-ton truck flying through the air. When he landed, everything changed. He awoke Christmas Day 2005 in Walter Reed Hospital, his jaw wired shut and his mother at his bedside. She delivered the news that he’d lost his left arm and leg in the explosion.
That’s why his image on the cover of Men’s Health is jarring. It’s hard not to focus on what’s missing in the picture. Here is a guy who literally gave an arm and a leg for his country; for you and me. And if it’s hard for us to look it, imagine how it felt for Noah. He’d been a natural athlete, used to pushing himself to the limit. And now he was a tattered remnant of what he’d been.
He fell into a depression, which is no surprise. What is surprising: He fought his way out of it. And he did it by deciding to focus not on how much he’d lost, but how much he still had left.
His inspiring journey to the cover of Men’s Health began when he joined a 24-hour gym, so he could visit early in the morning, when nobody would watch the handicapped guy struggling with his workouts.
"Little surprises kept me going," he told us, in his Alabama drawl. "A little better this day, a little stronger the next. Suddenly it was six months. I was like, 'Man, this is pretty good.'"
Last week, Noah was on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Ellen is among the funniest people alive, but she holstered her humor for that particular segment. You could see she was simply in awe of Noah when he strode out onto her set.
Take a look for yourself, if you missed it.
The audience was similarly impressed; they rose and gave him a lengthy standing ovation. At the end of his interview, Ellen offered to donate 200 bucks to Noah’s charity—The No Excuses Charitable Fund, to battle childhood obesity in Birmingham—for every pushup he could crank out in 20 seconds. I guess they knew he was good for it, because they brought out a giant check for 10 grand right after he finished.
Noah was glowing from the effort when he stood up. One-armed push-ups on national TV are the least of the difficulties he’s had to fight through.
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