Monk injured in ‘Walk for Peace’ gets prosthetic leg from Mercer team

In a crowded Presidents Dining Room on Mercer University’s campus, monk Bhante Dam Phommasan spoke of peace and mindfulness while answering questions from the school’s minister, Craig McMahan, and the crowd Wednesday evening.

Phommasan was one of the 19 monks who trekked from Fort Worth, Texas, to Washington D.C., from October 2025 to February in a “Walk for Peace.”

The Laos-born monk did not join the walk from the very beginning, but on Nov. 11, 2025, less than two weeks after the first steps were taken, he decided to join “to spread the peace to many, many people.”

But he was unable to finish the 2,300-mile journey. He and another monk were involved in an accident on Nov. 19, 2025 that led to Phomassan’s left leg being amputated below his knee two weeks later.

A driver collided with an escort vehicle traveling behind the line of monks as they walked through Dayton, Texas, according to reporting from the Associated Press.

He lost 10 centimeters of leg bone and a muscle in the accident, he said Wednesday, and had two options for recovery: amputation or a two year-long recovery process.

“I don’t have time to stay in a hospital,” he said, adding that he did not want to spend more time away from his temple than necessary.

As the news of the accident spread to the other members of the walk for peace, Phommasan said he encouraged the other monks to continue going on the journey that covered 10 states and lasted 108 days.

Communicating at times with the help of an interpreter, Phommasan spoke to the Mercer audience about how he focused on the physical pain he endured while walking while also forming a friendship with the monks who were alongside him.

Mindfulness, he said, was essential to “focusing on his pain and breathing” while he was on the trail.

“I wanted to train myself to walk, I wanted to train my body and my mind,” he said, echoing a sentiment that many of his counterparts have spoken about since the walk ended. “What we are feeling, we are serving our body and our mind.”

As he stepped into the room Wednesday wearing a saffron robe – hours after he was fitted with a prosthetic leg by Mercer’s prosthetics team – attendees turned to see the man walk in with the team of doctors who worked since March 11 to produce a prosthesis for him.

“The appreciation to see him, with his new leg, it’s beautiful,” Kim Pathammavong, Phommasan’s interpreter, said.

Among the crowd of about 150 people, Mercer undergraduate student Cindy Cao said “his first steps reminded me of what it was like when we were on a Mercer On Mission and what we learned.”

Ha Van Vo is a Mercer professor and founder of the school’s Mercer On Mission orthopaedic and prosthetic program, a flagship clinic for the university that sends students, professors and health professionals to Vietnam each summer to fit prosthetic limbs for amputees.

Vo said one his former students at Mercer, Brandon Tran, nursed a number of the monks after the peace walk ended in the nation’s capital. At Tran’s D.C.-based practice, he told the monks about his alma mater’s prosthetics program and the mission work that Mercer does in Vietnam.

“No matter how someone gets to needing a prosthetic, that first step is very monumental for everyone and very deeply personal,” Cao, who attended the Mercer On Mission trip in 2023, said. “It’s something that is shared and people who fit prosthetics and students like us are so lucky to be able to share in this moment.”

Phomassan was drawn to Mercer’s work, Vo said, because of the charitable work that it does in Vietnam for people who lose their limbs from unexploded, Vietnam War-era ordnance.

Vo said Laos, where Phomassan grew up until he was 14, contains 3 million landmines, and people are harmed daily by the hidden explosives. To combat it, McMahan and Vo have agreed to work with Phomassan and operate a second mission clinic in Laos in the future.

Misty Glore, who is pursuing her MBA at Mercer’s Stetson-Hatcher School of Business, said she followed the walk for peace for months and even drove to Montgomery, Ala., from Macon on Christmas Eve to see the procession.

“The accident didn’t slow him down at all. I followed his journey and he stayed in high spirits the entire time,” Glore said of the monk’s recovery that culminated in a new prosthesis Wednesday.

Glore said she has adopted more mindful and meditative practices in response to the walk for peace.She continues to wear a bracelet the monks gave her in Montgomery.

The material used for the prosthesis, Phomassan said, was one thing he could be thankful for. But he said that in the prosthetic limb, there was more to be had.

“You give me a lot of opportunity, a lot of dreams to walk again, to work, to do everything,” Phommasan said. “Thank you so much.”