Tammy Landeen of Caribou, who spent her formative years in Fort Fairfield, has traveled to Alaska, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Georgia during her military career. Soon, she will be traveling to Virginia to test a wheelchair tire changing prototype she has been developing with engineering students from colleges in Virginia and California.
The device is being built as part of the Quality of Life Plus program, a non-profit organization founded in 2009 whose mission is to “foster and generate innovations that aid and improve the quality of life of those injured in the line of duty in service to our country.”
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- Tammy Landeen of Caribou lost the use of a foot during her 10 years in the Army and subsequently suffered a spinal cord injury that required her to use a wheelchair. Here, she demonstrates how she needs to double-park in lots where disabled spaces are unavailable so she can open her car door all the way, climb into the driver’s seat, and then disassemble her wheelchair and place it in the passenger seat. (Christopher Bouchard)
Landeen spent ten years in the Army and lost the use of a foot during a training exercise. She later sustained a spinal cord injury while horseback riding that robbed her of the ability to use her legs.
Despite the injury, Landeen stayed active, and participated in a series of wheelchair games in Philadelphia, which is where she met Barbara Springer, who is now the chief of operations at Quality of Life Plus, which has its business office located in McLean, Virginia.
“We met in Philadelphia and started talking about where we were both from,” Landeen said. “Barb told me I’d never guess where she was from, and come to find out we’re both from Fort Fairfield.”
Landeen and Springer have kept in touch for five years, and while Springer was visiting her mother in Presque Isle this past year, pitched the idea of having Landeen participate in her program.
Working with the Quality of Life program, students from multiple engineering disciplines work under the guidance of faculty members at colleges in Virginia and California “to design and develop innovations that improve the quality of life of those who have served our country.,” according to the organization’s website.
“She approached me and asked if I had any ideas I could give to the students for the program,” Landeen said, adding that the idea of a wheelchair tire changing device was the “first thing” that came to mind.
Last year was Landeen’s first time living in Aroostook County in a wheelchair and, after enduring one harsh County winter, she realized “it is really hard to get around in snow and slush,” which required her to switch from snow tires to regular tires several times a day.
“The challenge is that I would have to transfer out of the wheelchair, then lug the tires over, then take this wheelchair apart and put the other tires on, and then take the wet tires back out of the house,” Landeen said.
Landeen has been working with student teams from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Virginia Tech, and the California Polytechnic State University via hour long video conferences. She said video calls involve explaining the needs and wants of her suggested device, and then working through a series of prototypes.
“I had to give them a list of my top priorities,” Landeen said. “They asked me what was important, and safety is of utmost importance to them, they follow that very closely.”
After the first few video calls, students came up with 29 ideas and presented Landeen with a slideshow of every possible device. Eventually that number was narrowed down to 11, then five, and now students are currently working on two prototypes.
Of the top two ideas, one involves a ramp leading to a slightly elevated surface that can catch her axle, so no pressure is on the wheelchair while the tires are changed. The other idea involves an actuator that lifts a wheelchair so the tires are off the ground and can be changed.
“My wheelchair has a button that lets me pop off the tire,” Landeen said. “As long as I push the button, the wheel can come off. So the whole concept they’re working with is to lift me up an inch or so and get the wheels off the ground so I can self-change without leaving the chair.”
Landeen says the project has really been opening students’ eyes to the challenges disabled people face on a regular basis, challenges that an “able-bodied person doesn’t think about.”
“They’re so smart, and they couldn’t be happier to work with me,” Landeen said. “They’ve taken it on as a wonderful challenge.”
Not only is the Quality of Life Plus program working to help Landeen use her wheelchair in the winter months, but the organization recently announced via press release that she would be honored in November with the program’s Challenger of the Month award.
“To have an organization ask me what’s going to make my life better, and then, ‘How can we build it?’ is an honor for me,” she said. “I honor them for this, and then for them to say you’re the Challenger of the Month on top of that? It’s very humbling.”
While she expects that the tire changing device will significantly help her throughout the frigid County winters, Landeen said there are still many challenges disabled people face in Aroostook County.
“The only time I miss city life is when I see how much people here take [being able-bodied] for granted,” Landeen said. “I can’t get into half of the stores in Caribou. Most stores don’t even have a ramp.”
Landeen said the issues she faces are, in part, likely due to a lower population, which results in less disabled people on average. Because of this, she said it seems that most people in the area simply “don’t think about it” as often as they would in a more heavily populated area.
“I have to make sure I use the bathroom before I leave the house to go to a restaurant,” Landeen said, “because the chances of them having a handicap-accessible bathroom are slim in this area. That’s been a law since the 70s; we’re talking 50 years here. It’s just sad that my home is so behind the times that it makes it difficult for me to go anywhere.
“They need to step up and realize it’s not just the disabled community that needs access to [businesses, restaurants, and facilities], but that the aging community here needs it too,” she said.
Landeen, born in Perth Andover, New Brunswick, first came to Aroostook County when she was in the eighth grade. Her mother remarried a Vietnam veteran from Fort Fairfield, who inadvertently inspired Landeen to join the military.
“He’d tell me all these great stories about the military,” she said, “but he’d always follow it up with, ‘You’d never make it.’ So I’d say I joined out of spite. I was going to make it just to prove him otherwise. Plus, what 17- or 18-year-old really wants to stay up here? So, I talked my boyfriend into joining with me, and we both enlisted into the Army together.”
Landeen said she wasn’t homesick right away, but eventually moved back as her husband was close to retiring from the military.
“We’d had enough of city living,” she said, “the traffic and crime, plus we’re getting older. Our families are getting older, and we decided it was time to go back home and live our life up here, and take care of our parents.”
According to Landeen, she will be flown to Virginia once students produce a finished prototype of the tire changing device.
