This story is part of a series covering the rising skate culture in Mansfield, produced in partnership with Skate Ohio.
On a hot June afternoon, Josh Campbell and his sons enjoyed some time at a skatepark in Shelby in Richland County. Eleven-year-old Colton was skating down a halfpipe, while 15-year-old Dominic showed off a new skill he learned. And Campbell, at age 47, was trying to relearn an old trick.
“I was trying to do a board slide on there," he said, showing how a skater would jump onto the platform and slide to the end.
It may have seemed like an ordinary summer day spent outside as a family, but there was a time that Campbell thought he'd never be able to skateboard again, he said. Campbell lost his right leg to bone cancer as a kid and picked up a board again for the first time in 30 years just last year, he said.
"A lot of it's coming back, like with the balancing and using your arms to help you from falling and things like that," he said. "I'm noticing that's something that seems to have stayed with me over the years, even though it was like 33 years ago."
Campbell was an avid skater as a kid. Starting around 8 years old, he began to learn on a halfpipe some local skaters had built behind a Wendy’s down the street from where he grew up in Elyria, he said.
“I broke my arm on the halfpipe, though. I went there, and the guys, the older guys really didn’t give me a lot of instruction," he said. "They just kind of were like, ‘Go for it!’ And I dropped in, but I didn’t even know what I was doing and landed right on my arm.”
One broken arm didn’t deter him, Campbell said. He kept skateboarding with his friends along with his various other activities – track, football, basketball. But when he was 14, he started having bad shin splints, he said.
“Then I started basketball, and about halfway through the season, it started getting more and more pain," he said. "And I started getting a lump right below my knee right here.”
Campbell got a biopsy and it yielded bad news: osteogenic sarcoma, a bone cancer typically found in young people.
“They removed the tumor at first, then a second time, but then it kept coming back," he said. "And they were worried about it spreading above my knee, so they decided to amputate above the knee.”
Keeping a positive mindset helped him get through losing his leg, Campbell said, and two weeks later, he was already walking with a prosthetic. He didn’t slow down from there, continuing to play basketball while picking up snowboarding and golf, he said. But he never went back to skateboarding, aside from trying once when he was 19, he said.
“I like tried to jump off this ledge and crashed real hard," he said, "and then I never got back on one until November.”
That’s when his son, Dominic, began to pick up skateboarding, inspired by video games.
“I was like, ‘You know what, let me see your board, Dominic. I’m going to try it.’ And I pushed from here to that cement pad, and I fell really hard," he said. "But then I was like, ‘You know what, that was fun. I missed that.’”
From there, Campbell began practicing on Dominic’s board inside, he said.
“Before I even ordered my board, I would take his board and put it on the carpet and just practice standing on it and balancing and kind of popping up the front of it and turning left or right, kick turning," he said.
Soon, Campbell bought his own board and was outside learning to skateboard again, just like when he was a kid.
“The adrenaline rush and the feelings are the same for sure," he said. "The day I first went with Dominic when I got my own deck, I almost burst into tears the first time I rolled down a hill, I was so happy.”
Campbell’s prosthetic is computerized and has settings that help him navigate different activities, which he thinks is one of the big differences in relearning now versus relearning with his old prosthetic at 19, he said.
"Back when I tried it in my teens, I only had — it was kind of like just a hydraulic knee," he said. "It wasn't computerized at all, and it barely like kind of helped you, especially like with hills and bending. But now this computerized one has a lot of different settings."
In a way, learning how to use a prosthetic has helped him relearn to skateboard, he said.
“Learning how to fall helps a lot," he said. "The first about year every time there would be wet, uneven ground or ice or snow or mud, I would fall so many times in a day, probably 20 times a day.”
All in the family
Now, skateboarding is a family affair. Campbell and his sons spend their afternoons going around town to find a good skate spot or make a day trip to a new skatepark, he said.
“It’s so awesome watching them progress and learn," he said. "Every time we go out, I think they learn five new tricks.”
Although relearning can be difficult, he continues to turn to the same thing that helped him through his cancer treatment.
“I try and stay positive about it," Campbell said. "I just try and learn all the things I can do and not focus on the things I can’t do.”
And getting to skateboard alongside his sons and encourage them makes the process all worth it, he said.
