COUER D’ALENE, Idaho – In the summer of 1973, Randy Tetzner and his neighborhood friends were caught up in the excitement of playing army.
That July, the boys decided to take their game to the next level by making homemade bombs.
Tetzner, then 13 years old, constructed his own explosive device.
Unfortunately, it detonated prematurely, and severed two of Tetzner’s fingers.
“Now that I understand the Physics of what I did, I understand how stupid it was, ” Tetzner said.
The bomb was crafted using matches and a canister. Once loaded, it became highly unstable.
Tetzner described the moment it exploded.
“I was deaf,” Tetzner said. “I could hear a loud tone. I can hear my mother screaming. I could see parts of me all over the floor, and I started the garage on fire.”
The explosion resulted in the loss of his pinky, ring, and part of his middle finger.
“I remember I was crying and screaming that I do not want to look at this, that I’m not going to look at my hand,” Tetzner said.
Tetzner took a gradual approach to recogery
“I noticed that hey, my hand, I can see the shadow of it,” Tetzner said. “So I would unwrap the bandages and looked at the shadow only. And then I was able to transition to the real thing. Because when you’re a kid, losing a body part is something that you don’t think that you’ll ever recover from.”
Tetzner says he did eventually recover and later served the country.
To enlist in the Army, Tetzner hid his injury.
“The reason I got in the army is because they used a local doctor and I hid my fingers,” Tetzner said. “He never saw it.”
Once enlisted, Tetzner says he did not have any issues.
“All of our guys were combat infantry men and they didn’t care… because I could do the monkey bars as good as anyone with their fingers,” he said.
His primary concern now is for the safety of children.
“You know there is nothing you can do about it now except live with it now and let people know, especially children that if you are going to do it, let your parents set the stuff off, do it in a safe way,” Tetzner said.
Ultimately, Randy Tetzner says he shares his story to remind parents about the importance of supervising their children, especially when fireworks are involved.
