MAPLE HEIGHTS, Ohio — The resilience that Army veteran Corwyn Collier shows as a partial amputee and track coach at Maple Heights High School has propelled him onto the cover of Men’s Health as the magazine’s Ultimate Guy 2023.
Men’s Health magazine searched the nation for inspiring real-life heroes for the Ultimate Guy Search. Collier, 40, is featured on the magazine’s January/February issue cover. His win and the Men’s Health cover was revealed on “The Today Show” in December.
Collier almost died in May 2009, when he was serving in Iraq with the United States Army. A bomb exploded under the patrol truck he was in, pinning his right leg and mangling his right hand. He went into cardiac arrest and spent 10 months in a hospital. Collier lost the fingers on his right hand and much of his right leg.
As a former All-American college athlete, Collier used to define himself based on his athletic skills. But losing 70 pounds and becoming an amputee meant rethinking the role fitness played in both his life and his definition of being a man.
In 2009, he took a leave from rehabilitation at Walter Reed Army Medical Center to be at a homecoming celebration at Kenston High School. He was the only member of the National Guard’s 135th Military Police Company injured during its tour in Iraq.
Now he is a history teacher at his alma mater, Maple Heights High School, the magazine noted in a release.
Collier’s story has much to teach about strength, resilience and being better men, the magazine said.
“When you identify yourself with being physically fit and now you can’t stand up or go to the bathroom by yourself, it made me lose hope,” Collier says in the magazine profile. “You don’t know how long [the recovery] is going to take. It made me feel like I’d rather be dead. That’s the depression and PTSD part of it all. That’s where my mind was at for a while.”
He also explained: “It wasn’t until my wife, Iisha, made me go to counseling that I was able to get to the point where I realized I had to love myself and stop worrying about what everybody else thinks. My wife noticed I was doing what everyone does when they’re depressed: smiling, living life, enjoying friends and family. But I wasn’t whole – yet.”
Since his injury, Collier has achieved more accomplishments.
In 2010, he started his master’s in education. Several years later, he became the first wounded/partial-amputee vet to obtain a pro card with the International Federation of Bodybuilding and Fitness, press reports said.
The issue of Men’s Health featuring Collier is currently on newsstands nationwide.
“Pretty much everything that we’re trying to do at Men’s Health, every single day, [is] trying to get people to push themselves mentally and physically so that they can be the best version of themselves,” Men’s Health Editor in Chief Richard Dorment said in a release. “There is nobody that we talked to across America who better exemplifies that than this guy.”
The Men’s Health issue profiles Collier along with the two Ultimate Guy Search runners-up — Felipe Proaño, a climber and adventurer who will change how you think about the planet; and Brad Schaeffer, a Manhattan podiatrist and an advocate for the LGBTQ+ community.
All three men are also featured together in a Men’s Health “Train Like” video, which shows how a passion for fitness improved their lives.
Collier is proud of his legacy as a mentor to teens.
“‘I can die happy knowing I was there to help people,” he told Men’s Health. “I always tell my students, ‘You get a mind, a body, and a lifetime. What you do with the first two determines the last one’.”
Julie Washington covers healthcare for cleveland.com. Read previous stories at this link. Also:
MetroHealth’s advanced birthing center, NICU opens next week inside Glick Center (photo gallery)
