Real hero gets gift from Plaxico

Real hero gets gift from Plaxico
Newsday
BY ARTHUR STAPLE
September 25, 2007

Plaxico Burress usually secrets away the balls he catches for touchdowns. After his fifth touchdown catch of the season, the play that provided the winning margin in Sunday's 24-17 win over the Redskins, Burress found someone on the Giants' sideline at FedEx Field he preferred have the ball rather than himself.

He gave the keepsake to Lt. Col. Greg Gadson, an Army commander who had spoken to the Giants on Saturday night at their hotel. Gadson lost both legs to an improvised explosive device in Iraq in May, but came to meet the team at the urging of wide receivers coach Mike Sullivan, who was a teammate and classmate of Gadson's at West Point.

"You see a guy go through the things that he has been through and he is in such good spirits," said Burress, who, like Gadson, is from southeastern Virginia. The two men talked at length Saturday. "It was just unbelievable to come across a person like that who went through a tremendous change in his life. I have never met somebody like that who had a high spirit like nothing was wrong and I was like, 'Wow.' I thought, 'I have a little ankle injury, I have to go out here and give it my best.' All I thought about when I scored that touchdown was that I wanted to find him to give him that football."

Coach Tom Coughlin asked Gadson to speak to the team Saturday. "Everyone was moved by what he said," Burress said.

"The players gave him a standing ovation and the volume kept rising," Coughlin said. "He is an incredible man. A powerful man. The power of his spirit. That is what he really did for us, just the idea that the spirit rises above all these adverse conditions. He is still the same man that he always was. He just had a terrible thing happen to him, something he is not going to let hold him back."