OMAHA, Neb. —  After Chief Warrant Officer James Lowman fractured three vertebrae in a June 2005 helicopter accident in Iraq, he wondered whether he would be able to stay in the military and how he would support his wife and child.

With so many worries and uncertainties, the idea of a family vacation seemed out of the question.

And yet, the Lowmans spent a week in April at the Bahama Bay Resort in Orlando, Fla. _ free tickets to Walt Disney World included.

Their vacation was made possible by Wounded Warriors, an Omaha-based charity that owns a condo at the Orlando resort as well as one in Galveston, Texas. Wounded Warriors offers free weeklong stays at its condos to any service member wounded in action who has children. Widows and children of those killed in combat also qualify.

The vacations are"a way to heal families,"said Wounded Warriors founder John Folsom, a colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve.

Folsom felt a need to do something for injured soldiers while watching casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan arrive at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany where he was stationed in early 2003. His first efforts in fundraising generated enough money to buy a large-screen TV for the hospital.

(Story continues below)

He left Germany about a year later and incorporated Wounded Warriors in Omaha. He was sent to Iraq in February 2005 and served there a year before returning to Omaha and leaving active duty. He has been running his nonprofit organization since then.

Wounded Warriors initially accepted donations to buy computers to send to Landstuhl, but Folsom learned other groups were already doing that. It occurred to him that what some wounded service members and war-torn families really needed was abreak from the trauma.

By offering families vacations, he said,"I could help in a small way to mitigate a loss."

The Lowmans were the first family to stay at Wounded Warriors'condo at the Bahama Bay Resort.

"It was a great opportunity to forget about what we'd been dealing with,"said Lowman, 28, who is now stationed with the 18th Airborne Corps in Fort Bragg, N.C.

The time as a family"causes you to re-energize, to go back into the fight and decide what's best to do,"said his wife, Keli.

Wounded Warriors recently played host to Maria Wiener and her two daughters, Mikayla, 7, and Theadora, 3, who left their Long Island, N.Y., home last week for a vacation at the Orlando condo.

Mikayla mentioned her wish to visit Disney World in phone conversations with her father, who was deployed to Iraq in January 2005.

"He promised he would take her when he got back,"said Maria Wiener.

She kept the promise for her husband. Jeffrey Wiener, 32, was killed in combat near Haditha, Iraq, in May 2005.

Wounded Warriors is financed through donations and rents collected on the condos when they aren't being used by military families, Folsom said. The organization collected $302,279 in revenue in 2004, according to the most recent tax records available. Folsom receives no salary, the records show.

The organization paid about $250,000 for each condo, Folsom said. The organization's next project is to build a retreat in northwest Nebraska where families can come to reconnect.

"I think it's really nice that somebody cares enough to think of you that way,"said Irene Prather, 31, of Evans, Ga."It shows respect and that people are thankful."

Prather's husband, Army Chief Warrant Officer Clint J. Prather, was among 18 people killed on April 6, 2005, when their Chinook helicopter crashed in Afghanistan.

Prather and her children, Aaron and Cheyenne, spent a few days at the Orlando condo in June for Aaron's 11th birthday.

Like many families, the Reids of Palm Bay, Fla., said their Orlando vacation would have been impossible without Wounded Warriors.

Petty Officer First Class Pete Reid, a Navy Seabee reservist, was severely injured in a mortar attack in Iraq. Five were killed and 33 others injured in the May 2004 explosion.

Michele Reid said her 51-year-old husband lost an eye and suffers from brain damage and partial paralysis, among other injuries.

Wounded Warriors, she said,"made it possible to take a trip that others take for granted."

___

On the Net:

http://www.woundedwarriors.org

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.