Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/478498
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 9 6 you catch a fish!" The rest of the group looked on in stunned silence as Stetson moved to obey his mother. A dversity is nothing new to Stetson, who was born with arthrogryposis, a rare birth defect that manifests itself in severe congenital joint contractures. Even routine, everyday tasks such as eating and dressing pose significant challenges for the boy. From birth, Stetson's legs, folded and crossed at a 45-degree angle, could not possibly grow to carry his Stetson Bardfield has exceeded the expectations of doctors, and with a little help, has learned to cast a fly. By Beau Beasley D own on one knee, Bob Gartner struggled to fit a pair of waders onto irrepressible 13-year-old Stetson Bardfield—a first-time fly angler who was full of energy and champing at the bit to get into the river, and with good reason: After months of casting fly line at cardboard cutouts of fish, he was ready to leave the practice behind him and move on to real fishing. Normally mild mannered and quiet, Gartner's cheeks grew flushed as his frustration increased. Like Stetson, Gartner had waited for this day for months. Unfortunately, Stetson's prosthetic legs weren't sliding into the waders easily. Gartner is a program lead at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, for Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing (PHWFF), a nonprofit organization that serves veterans through fly fishing. He and his friend Marty Laksbergs, program lead for the PHWFF chapter at nearby Marine Corps Base Quantico, had invited me to join their joint warmwater fly-fishing outing. At the time, I'd been working on a book about PHWFF and had shadowed both groups for more than two years. Stetson, whose father is in the military, had seen PHWFF members fly casting in front of the USO building at Fort Belvoir, and he'd never seen anything quite like it and was immediately intrigued. For weeks he pestered his mother to allow him to ask the veterans to teach him how to cast; for weeks she denied his request because, she told him, he was not a veteran. Eventually Stetson's persistence paid off: His mother gave him permission. Bob Gartner quickly agreed that if the young man wanted to learn how to fly fish, then he had come to the right place. While Gartner continued to struggle with the waders—and Laksbergs looked on silently—Chris Bardfield, Stetson's mother, made an unusual executive decision: "I think you'd better just take your legs off. I mean, really—this is pretty silly. Bob's done all any reasonable person could do to get those blasted waders on. Besides, we haven't got all day—and I want to see