Breakfast Champion
Army Veteran Wheelchair Racer Chosen for Cheerios Box

	Army Veteran and wheelchair athlete Holly Koester is pictured, bottom right, on special Cheerios boxes. Image Courtesy of General Mills.

Generations of breakfast eaters have gazed across the kitchen table at the pictures of all-star athletes on the front of a cereal box. Hank Aaron, Esther Williams, Lance Armstrong, and Chris Everett have all shared a breakfast table with America. This year, it’s Army veteran and wheelchair racer Holly Koester’s turn.

General Mills™ chose the marathon competitor—and 11 fellow gold medalists from the Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA) 2007 National Veterans Wheelchair Games—to grace the cover of special Cheerios™ cereal boxes in 2008. Koester is the only woman athlete featured on the box cover. Boxes were sold in military commissaries, veteran hospitals and other military outlets this spring with the slogan “Support Military Families.” Each box shared inspirational stories of wheelchair athletes, and a portion of the proceeds benefit Fisher Houses where military families can stay while injured loved ones recover. (To learn more, visit the Fisher House Web site.)

“Holly Koester” may not be a household name, but Cheerios™ decided that Koester and other wheelchair athletes were star choices for issuing a “get active” challenge to America.

	Wheelchair Racer Holly Koester has hand pushed her wheelchair through 100, 26.2- mile marathons in 50 states. Photo Courtesy of Holly Koester.

The honor of being selected for a cereal cover shocked the former 101st Airborne Division captain. “The Cheerios box? That’s Tiger Woods. That’s Michael Jordan, and yet they chose plain old me,” says the Walton Hills, OH, resident.

Star athletes may have more recognizable names, but few could be more inspiring to breakfast eaters than Koester. By the end of 2008, Koester expects to have completed her goal of racing through 100 marathons in 50 states—pushing her wheelchair with her hands for 26.2 miles to each finish line.

Koester says that she sharpened her natural drive and determination during her service in the Army. In 1981, she joined the military through college ROTC with her twin sister Joy, now a colonel preparing for retirement from the Army Reserve. The twin sisters are both Women's Memorial Charter Members; Holly joined in 1993 and Joy in 1995.

	Army veteran and wheelchair racer Holly Koester (left) and her twin sister Joy, now a colonel in the Army Reserve, posed for this picture not long after Koester was paralyzed and her sister had returned from active duty in Operation Desert Storm. Photo Courtesy of Joy and Holly Koester.

Koester’s military career came to an abrupt end in 1990. She was paralyzed from the chest down in a traffic accident that occurred as she drove into Redstone Arsenal, AL, to prepare to deploy in Operation Desert Storm.

A “life-long enjoyment of physical fitness and competition” kept Koester  “positively focused” during her recuperation and pushed her to look for ways to get active again. She found her inspiration in the VA’s National Veterans Wheelchair Games.

“The Games probably saved my life,” she says. “What I saw at my first Games (in 1991) inspired me. It was the first time I saw healthy, athletic people in wheelchairs. They were partying; they were dancing; they were laughing, playing and competing. They were living. I knew I could too.”

Koester remembers her first Wheelchair Games as the defining moment of her post-accident life. “It helped me to know I could still be (physically) competitive,” says the former All-Army Volleyball Team member. “Seeing me there probably helped my family even more, though, because they knew that if I could still have sports, I’d be okay."

Koester adds that getting active, and acclimated, to her new position as a wheelchair competitor was not easy, but it was and continues to be rewarding.

“The first thing I ever competed in after my accident was the National Veterans Wheelchair Games’ obstacle course,” called the slalom, she recalls. “You pop wheelies down steps, do steep ramps, come down on a sort of teeter totter, move through doors. I showed up to compete but some of those things I didn’t know how to do yet, like pop wheelies, so I was very slow.”

	The VA's National Veterans Wheelchair Games inspired life-long athlete Holly Koester to refocus her competitive drive and determination to win gold medals in the annual games and compete in marathons nationwide. Photo Courtesy of Holly Koester.

While most competitors finished in minutes, it took Koester 10 minutes to complete the course. “My family and the whole crowd were cheering me on. They were yelling and crying like I was in the Olympic finals or something,” she says. “They helped me finish that first day, and I haven’t stopped since.”

The never-quit determination with which Koester competed earned her the cherished “Spirit of the Games” Award.  She’s only added to the honors, which include serving as an Olympic torchbearer in the 1996 Paralympics in Atlanta, GA. Koester will compete again in the 2008 National Veterans Wheelchair Games, to be held July 25-29 in Omaha, NE. Find out more about the games on the VA Web site.

Koester says she still “can’t understand why Cheerios picked me as a role model because I don’t see myself that way; I just go out and race.” However, she adds that she does see how featured wheelchair athletes could be inspirational—especially to other wheelchair and disabled veterans. “My hope is that the Cheerios stories will reach someone who needs to hear that they can do it too,” she says. “They can look at the athletes on that box and see that if you set your mind to something, you can do it.

“You can climb any hill,” Koester adds, “I know because I’ve pushed my way up a lot of them.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: You can read about just one of Holly Koester’s inspiring marathons, the 2005 Crazy Horse Marathon in South Dakota, on the race’s Web site.

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(May 2008)