Click here to listen to the audio interview with Lee Woodruff.

By Robin Jay, Editorial Director at www.BehavioralHealthCentral.com

This is Robin Jay with www.BehavioralHealthCentral.com. Joining me today is Lee Woodruff, a Good Morning America contributing journalist, and also the wife of Bob Woodruff, the ABC World News Tonight co-anchor who was injured in Iraq in 2006 in a devastating roadside bombing that left him in a coma for five weeks. Lee told BHC that Bob had been in Iraq for his eighth assignment and was traveling down what was supposed to be a very safe road to do a story about where the troops were in terms of training and handing over to the Iraqi forces. He was hit by an Improvised Explosive Device that had been buried in the road just minutes before the convoy went down. The shrapnel hit Bob in the head and in the back and his helmet was blown off. He received a traumatic brain injury and was peppered with shrapnel in the whole left side of his face and upper body. Lee recalls he was incredibly close to death, not expected to live through the first night. But thanks to his skilled surgeons, physicians and loving support of his wife and four children, Bob has made an incredible recovery.

Today on www.BehavioralHealthCentral.com, we’re speaking with Lee about how Bob and her family are doing today, four years after the devastating injury, about the Bob Woodruff Foundation, its missions and goals and – and a special fund-raising promotion at the luxurious Omphoy Ocean Resort in Palm Beach, Florida. We’ll also discuss some interesting things that have been going on with the Woodruff family and Lee’s book, Perfectly Imperfect, that’s coming out in paperback in April. (And, ladies in our BHC audience, don’t miss a special personal note from Lee at the end of this article about an opportunity to participate her new video project.) Lee, welcome back to BHC and thanks so much for joining us today.

Lee Woodruff: You’re welcome, thanks for having me.

BHC: Lee, give us a brief background about the Bob Woodruff Foundation and a little bit about Bob’s experience that led to the development of the foundation.

LW: We felt like such a lucky family with the way that Bob recovered, and certainly the treatment he got in the acute care phase and at the hands of the military was a big reason for his pretty miraculous recovery. We felt like we had gotten so much attention for this injury, more so than certainly the troops when they come back from the war. We felt that we just needed to do something to help make other Americans aware of what was going on because most people I think, back in 2006, really didn’t have any idea of the nature and the vast number of head injuries that were coming back from the war.

BHC: So when was the Bob Woodruff Foundation developed and what are some of the initiatives that you’ve taken so far?

LW: I think we actually started in 2006 and we were first initially housed under the Brain Injury Association of America because when our first book came out In An Instant we immediately had people sort of shoving dollar bills in our hand and saying, “Please make sure this gets to a soldier.” So we started with the idea the we would act as sort of a lightening rod to collect money, and then we would look at all the small grass roots organizations on the ground around the country who were really doing the boots-on-the-ground work with rehabilitation and retraining and reemployment and with therapy to help these men and women reintegrate into their community. So we sort of acted like a fairy godmother. People apply to us for grants and you can feel secure that we have vetted and looked at their books and really decided that they’re really doing the work that they say they’re doing.

BHC: Lee since your family’s experience in 2006, do we have any idea about how many soldiers or their families are affected by post traumatic brain injury, by PTSD and similar other factors related to war?

LW: The RAND study came out a year ago saying that there are 320,000 who have suffered some form of a head injury and that can include the hidden injuries of the war. And then another statistic on top of that is they figure that there’s probably at least another 100,000 who have also reported hidden injuries and, again, as you mentioned at the beginning of the show, those are things like post traumatic stress disorder, combats stress, somebody who looks perfectly fine on the outside when you see them in the grocery store, but on the inside just everything that they’ve gone through and had to do during this was has really changed the way that they integrate and communicate and interact with people; it changed them from who they fundamentally used to be.

BHC: Certainly. Lee in our last interview, you had talked about when Bob came out of this coma. Can you talk a little bit about that timing and what sorts of issues you and your family faced once Bob was out of his coma?

LW: Well, when Bob came out of his coma, he was really missing so many words. His injury took place in his left temporal lobe, so for a right-handed person, that’s really your speech center in the broca’s area of the brain. So he was missing words, he was missing some memories, and that was kind of frightening for somebody who was an anchor on a news show. You’re thinking, “Is this person ever going to be able to talk again? Are they cognitively going to be able to put it together?” It was amazing to watch his healing process begin almost immediately and each day you would see improvements as those neurons began to connect and he would sort of become awake more fully as the days and weeks passed. If you ask what his issues still are today, he would tell you he has mild aphasia. He’ll be cruising along in a paragraph and then all of the sudden be looking for the word that he wants to say and it won’t be at the tip of his tongue, but he’s a bright enough man, and he’s got enough compensatory skills that he’ll just come up with a synonym or another way to say it, and so probably most people wouldn’t be as aware of it if you didn’t know him before.

BHC: Let’s talk about the upcoming Palm Beach fundraiser for the Bob Woodruff Foundation that will help soldiers and their families who are dealing with issues like this. Tell us about that promotion.

LW: It’s at the Omphoy Resort. The folks down there in Palm Beach so generously offered – and it’s actually not a one-time promotion. If you book a stay at this resort, (and I’ve gone online and looked at it, it’s absolutely beautiful) and you mention the Bob Woodruff Foundation, I think for the next however many months they want to be so gracious and do this they will donate 25 percent of your stay to the Foundation. So that’s really generous.

BHC: Lee, I can tell you first hand that I have stayed at the Omphoy Resort and it is absolutely an exquisite place. Right on the water, right in the heart of Palm Beach and certainly a beautiful place to go even without the promotion. Is there any particular code or anything people should give when making reservations?

LW: I think you just need to mention that you heard about the promotion for the Bob Woodruff Foundation, I think that’s all that’s required.

BHC: Lee, we’ve talked a little bit about the mission of the Bob Woodruff Foundation, but tell us a little bit more about what the money generated from this fundraiser will go toward.

LW: Well of some of the programs that we fund, one works with children of wounded soldiers, so the sons and daughters, and it does sort of crisis counseling with the kids to try to get them to talk about what they’re feeling -- Why is daddy different? Sometimes my dad scares me when he gets angry. There’s another program started in Texas after a woman found a lot of famillies sleeping on the floor – because when your husband is wounded or killed or your spouse, your wife you have a certain amount of time to get off the base – and a lot of people were leaving their beds behind because that just meant you needed to have a bigger U-haul which was more money. So she started a program where she went to furniture stores and got beds donated, but she didn’t have mattresses so she wrote a grant to us for 300 mattresses and we wrote that check pretty darn fast once we checked her organization out. We support an organization that builds houses for homeless veterans. One out of four homeless people is a veteran on the streets of America today and I could just go on and on and tell you, you can actually go to our website which is http://www.Remind.org and you can see some of the 35 organizations that we support around the country.

BHC: We will certainly do that. Lee is there anything else that you’d like to say about the Foundation before we move on to talk about your book?

LW: Well I think we feel honored to be able to just shine a little bit of light. I think that the American public has woken up so much to what’s been happening in these wars when these service members come home. I didn’t know a lot or had very little, really no military experience with folks that were in the military before Bob was injured, and what you really realize is it has really nothing to do with the politics of the war, and whether or not you were for the war or believe in it. It’s really about how we treat those who have served their country, and stood up to volunteer to go when their country asked, and when they come home wounded, it’s really incumbent upon us as a country to take care of them.

BHC: Absolutely. And let me say thanks for what you’re doing, both you and Bob, to help those that are dealing with this very difficult issue and their families. But let’s now talk also about “Perfectly Imperfect”. We previously had talked about your first book, In an Instant that chronicled your, Bob’s and your families experience with his injury. Tell us about Perfectly Imperfect and what’s going to be released in April.

LW: The paperback version, Perfectly Imperfect came out last April and it’s really a collection of essays, in a lot of ways. I hate to say, it’s a woman’s book because a lot of men have read it and enjoyed it as well. But it’s kind of looking at life like an orange and if each section is a different role that we play in life as a sister, mother, daughter, a parent, or a child taking care of a parent. The chapters all cover that ground. Some of them are serious and some of them are supposed to be more humorous -- like the fact that my husband cannot buy me gifts that I like that are any good. But the last two chapters really grew out of In an Instant , they kind of take off where In an Instant left off. And the one is about being a caregiver and it’s the extreme strains and stresses and what happens when ultimately the adrenalin runs out. We got Bob in a good place and he was safe and he was healing, but then I kind of had a chance to collapse at that point in time because you do so much when the adrenalin is pumping. And then the last chapter is really called the 10 Things I Know Now, and that’s really what to do and say and how to treat somebody who is a caregiver or going through a difficult situation. And that grew out of not only my own experience, but also from talking to thousands of people on the book tour for In an Instant and just hearing their stories.

BHC: For the listeners who are first joining us, the book is called Perfectly Imperfect and, Lee, where can it be found?

LW: You can get it anywhere, but I have a website, it’s just www.LeeWoodruff.com and you can learn more, you can go directly in to buy the book online if you want. I always tell people to go patronize your local independent bookstore because that’s so important that we keep those little book stores alive in our communities. But you can read more, and I also write a blog about many aspects of parenting and caregiving and being a woman. You can write to me on a blog and I answer everybody who writes me. So you can find out about the books that way.

BHC: Well Lee, is there anything in closing that I haven’t asked that you think is important for our audience to know – About the Bob Woodruff Foundation, your books, or anything that I haven’t asked.

LW: I think you’ve done a pretty darn thorough interview I have to say missy. I think you covered every base and I thank you for talking about the Foundation and the promotion. I hope everybody, I mean what a great thing to do, to go somewhere wonderful and beautiful and also be able to do a good thing by doing it.

BHC: Lee, thank you for your time and my best to your family. 

LW: Great. Thanks Robin.

BHC: Thanks Lee, take care.

To find out more about luxurious Omphoy Ocean Resort In Palm Beach Florida, go to www.omphoy.com. The exquisite hotel is located at 2842 SOUTH OCEAN BLVD PALM BEACH Florida 33480. For reservations, call 561-540-6440 or email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . For more information about post traumatic brain injury, go to www.BehavioralHealthCentral.com.
 

*A PERONAL NOTE FROM LEE WOODRUFF to the ladies of the BHC audience who may wish to appear in a nostalgic video she’s planning:

Say what you will, the flannel nightgown was a rite of passage in girlhood and the college dorm-- and for many of us ladies- its still a part of the nightly routine.

I’m doing a home-spun video to launch the paperback version of "Perfectly Imperfect" focusing on my chapter about the Lanz nightgown -- perhaps the most famous of the nightgown brands for "girls of a certain age." This chapter, over the past year of book readings, never fails to get a healthy show of hands and some big chuckles from those who wore the granny gown.

I will be donning a Lanz to rap out my ode to this rite of girl and womanhood -- but Im looking for ladies with a sense of humor who might want to share their photos of themselves in the Lanz -- either past or present -- to intersperse through the video. They can be new photos, old photos, group shots, staged photos, the Lanz in motion-- action shots -- hunting, fishing, running, lounging. Whatever you like.

NO names will be used -- but I hope a lot of memories will be rekindled.

And I hope you will pass this on to your friends too.

Please email me any photos to my publicist This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

and we can black out faces too -- but the faces (and hairstyles) are so much more fun!

Thanks for being a good sport.

-- Lee

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