Lessons From Landmines
February 18, 2010 • By Matt Sutherland, Contributing Writer
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New Director Has Dedicated His Life to Landmine Removal After Losing Legs
HARRISONBURG, Va. — Ken Rutherford, a political science professor at JMU, doesn’t wake up feeling tired or overwhelmed. Instead, Rutherford’s early morning routine is upbeat.
“I do not dread any morning; there are a lot of people in this world that dread getting up,” Rutherford said. “I just can’t do that. There’s just not enough hours in the day.”
On Feb. 1, Rutherford began his work as the new director for the Center for International Stabilization and Recovery, a subsidiary department of the Mine Action Information Center.
The MAIC is a JMU public policy center dealing with landmine-related issues. Since it was started by the United States Department of Defense in 1996, the MAIC has provided training in mine clearance and victim assistance. The center also publishes the tri-annual Journal of ERW and Mine Action, one of the leading journals on landmine removal.
“His advocacy and outreach efforts have been monumental in raising awareness about international stability and recovery,” said Geary Cox, assistant editor for the CISR. “In the short time he’s been at JMU, his energy and enthusiasm is readily apparent.”
Rutherford is considered by many who know him to be the most optimistic person one has ever met. It is nearly impossible to fathom that a landmine explosion took his legs from him in 1993.
After the Somali Revolution ended in 1992, Rutherford traveled with the International Rescue Committee to establish a series of credit unions to stabilize the nation’s economy.
“The philosophy there was [that] you keep your right hand open to shake someone’s hand, and yourleft hand free, so you could use your gun,” Rutherford said. “On the loudspeakers, there were prayers going on constantly. There, if you lived by the sword, you died by the sword.”
While traveling to a work site Dec. 16, 1993, Rutherford and his team drove over a landmine that exploded and destroyed their vehicle. When he regained his senses, Rutherford noticed his foot was torn off from his right leg.
“When I tied tourniquets around my legs, I thought I was going to die,” Rutherford said. “When they told me I was out there for only 40 minutes, I thought they were all crazy. When you have an experience like that, there is never a bad day.”
Three years after his right leg was amputated in Kenya, health concerns led doctors to amputate his left leg.
Rutherford isn’t bitter about his injury. On the contrary, he has devoted his entire life to the removal of landmines.
“I’ve probably written more about landmines than anyone in the world,” Rutherford said.
Rutherford’s extensive résumé backs up his claim. After earning his doctorate at Georgetown University and becoming a professor at Missouri State University, Rutherford co-founded Survivor Corps, formally known as the Landmine Survivors Network. Survivor Corps is an organization using the peer support method to help other victims with difficulties such as coping with loss and finding jobs.
Survivor Corps was the first of its kind: a group for landmine survivors created by survivors. Through the program, Rutherford worked alongside politicians like Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Princess Diana to raise public awareness of mine safety.
Rutherford wants the public to understand several things they might not otherwise know about landmines. For example, the United States gives more money than any country annually in demining and aiding landmine victims, with more than $1.4 billion spent.
In contrast, the United States also has the third largest stockpiles of Improvised Explosive Devices in the world, behind China and Russia. In total, the United States has almost 18 million unused IEDs and landmines.
The United States is one of the only countries in the Western world that did not sign the 1997 Ottawa Treaty, a pledge by several nations to ban the use of landmines in warfare. Only two other United Nations Security Council members, China and Russia, have not signed the treaty.
“Almost every country that we’re fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with in Afghanistan and Iraq has signed,” Rutherford said. “It would definitely be a positive signal for the United States to sign.”
In the near future, Rutherford hopes to continue a program at JMU that he began at Missouri State. In coalition with the Campaign to Ban Landmines, Rutherford took several students to Kenya in 2009 in order to understand Africa’s political, social and economic status.
“I tell the students, ‘Take one of my classes,’ ” Rutherford said. “If you don’t see the world as a college student, you might not see it at all.”
Rutherford acknowledges that student plans for research will take at least a year to be concrete. Until then, Rutherford plans on broadening his research.
“The reality is there’s always going to be bad people; people break the laws,” Rutherford said. “But that should not prevent us from having preventative strategies.”
Eric Wuestewald, a senior English major, has only had a week to work with Rutherford at the MAIC, but already has a good impression of him.
“He seems genuinely enthusiastic about [landmines],” Wuestewald said. “He’s a very friendly guy, very sincere and a hard worker.”
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