Issue link: https://newsleader.uberflip.com/i/207831
Sarasota News Leader November 8, 2013 Sarasota County Sheriff's Office, thanked Gov. Rick Scott for his support of the park. Scott, who had come to watch some of the opening day events of the championships, had stopped to meet the veterans. While Kenney referenced the rowing venue's growing importance to Sarasota and Manatee counties' economies in terms of filling hotel rooms, Kenney was looking well beyond that, zeroing in on a far more critical facet of the facility. Benderson Park is 40 miles from the busiest hospital in the Veterans Administration system, Kenney pointed out — James A. Haley Veterans' Hospital in Tampa, whose polytrauma center deals "with the worst of the worst." The state of Florida has 1.6 million Page 95 veterans, Kenney continued. "We have literally thousands in the Sarasota area that will be able to take advantage of [Benderson Park] and what it's going to ... offer for adaptive sports." Kenney is convinced, he says, that sports are key to helping wounded veterans work past the horrors that remain with them from the battlefield. THE PAST AND THE FUTURE Two days later, 23-year-old Nicholas Thom sat on a floating dock at the park and took in the activities around him. Just two days earlier, he had been on Benderson Lake for the first time in a rowing vessel. Nicholas Thom watches activity around him as he sits on a floating dock at Benderson Park. Photo by Rachel Hackney