Marine Lance Cpl. Michael DeLancey stood outside a new custom-built house in Pinellas Park yesterday and got handed the keys to a home he'll never have to pay a mortgage on. The gift came from the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, twenty years almost to the day after an enemy sniper's bullet tore through his shoulder in Haditha, Iraq, fractured three vertebrae, and left him paralyzed below the T5 vertebra.
The ribbon-cutting yesterday, brought out city officials, community members and first responder leaders, according to the City of Pinellas Park. Tunnel to Towers board member John LaBarbera, a retired FDNY battalion commander who served on 9/11, spoke at the event and did not hold back describing DeLancey's work helping fellow wounded veterans, calling it nothing short of amazing and heroic. He went further, telling the crowd DeLancey is one of the most impressive people he has ever met.
The Florida Department of Veterans' Affairs was also acknowledged at the event, and organizers noted that Tunnel to Towers relies on donors giving as little as $11 a month to fund homes like this one. The foundation's smart-home builds are outfitted with iPad-controlled lighting and climate systems, motorized doors and blinds, pull-down kitchen cabinets, adjustable stovetops and roll-in showers, per the Tunnel to Towers Foundation — adaptations built specifically to restore independence to catastrophically injured veterans.
The Injury That Changed Everything
DeLancey was critically wounded on September 1, 2006, according to the Kaiserslautern American. He flatlined five times before medics stabilized him for evacuation to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, the outlet reports, and he ultimately spent 41 days in intensive care between Landstuhl and Walter Reed. Just weeks before the smart-home ceremony, on July 29, DeLancey traveled back to Landstuhl for the first time in nearly 20 years to personally thank the medical staff who saved his life, the same report notes.
September 1 will mark the 20th anniversary of that day — his Alive Day, the date a wounded service member survived a life-threatening combat event. Pinellas Park has turned the occasion into an annual tradition: a 10-mile community bike ride through the city with police and fire escorts, according to the City of Pinellas Park. This year's ride falls on the actual 20th anniversary.
Building a Home for Wounded Veterans, Literally
DeLancey didn't wait around for others to build support systems for veterans like him. In 2015, he partnered with the city to establish the Wounded Warriors Abilities Ranch at Lurie Park, a fully ADA-accessible city park designed specifically for wheelchair users and adaptive sports, complete with wheelchair sports courts, specialized exercise stations and half-mile handcycling trails, according to the city. In 2022, the ranch expanded with a Memorial Garden and paver walkway honoring fallen service members and local Pinellas Park military personnel, with proceeds from commemorative bricks funding adaptive sports programming.
His father, Mike DeLancey Sr., became a full-time military caregiver after his son's paralysis and later co-founded WWAR, where he now serves as Chief Operating Officer alongside his son, according to the Wounded Warrior Project. The elder DeLancey learned caregiving from scratch and first introduced his son to adaptive handcycling back in 2010.
A Region With a Large Veteran Population
Pinellas County is home to more than 67,000 military veterans, who make up over 8% of the county's adult population, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates — figures that place it among the top Florida counties for veteran residents. That density helps explain why a single Marine's recovery has grown into a citywide institution, with a park, a foundation and now a debt-free house all tracing back to his 2006 injury.
Tunnel to Towers was established after September 11, 2001, in honor of fallen FDNY firefighter Stephen Siller, and the foundation has since committed more than $1 billion toward mortgage-free smart homes and supportive housing for injured veterans and first responder families, as Hoodline has previously reported. DeLancey's new house adds one more name to that national list, but in Pinellas Park, he was already known as far more than a recipient of charity.
