SANFORD — He says he’s no hero, that he was doing the same job as anyone else in the military. But Travis Mills got a hero’s welcome to Sanford on Thursday.

His first stop was the Sanford Springvale Rotary Club. Then he went to Sanford Junior High School, where he was greeted with a rousing cheer.

Mills, 28, tells his story in a matter-of-fact way, interspersed with jokes about his life before the bomb that destroyed his limbs. He now lives with three artificial limbs. He has a fourth, but it’s uncomfortable, so he uses it infrequently.

Mills was on his third tour of duty in Afghanistan and on patrol with his unit on April 10, 2012, when he removed his pack and placed it on the ground. A bomb hidden in the roadway exploded.

Despite all medical efforts to save them, Mills lost both arms and legs.

But it hasn’t held him back – not one bit. A motivational speaker, Mills has co-written a book about his experiences and formed the Travis Mills Foundation to help wounded veterans and their families find their “new normal.”

When he was wounded that April day, Mills, a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne, knew he was in tough shape.

“I told my medic to save my guys,” he said. “I figured I wasn’t going to make it home. My medic had differ- ent plans.”

In a hospital in Germany, Mills wondered aloud if he would ever see his baby daughter, Chloe, again. That was the last thing he said before he was anesthetized for surgery.

Four days later, he learned the news.

“The day I turned 25, I found out I was a quad amputee,” he said.

Wondering how he was going to take care of his family, he told his wife, Kelsey, to “move on.” She didn’t.

He thought his baby daughter would be afraid of him. She wasn’t.

“She just smiled,” he recalled.

Mills kept pestering his doctors to let him start therapy. Even thought they thought it was too soon, they eventually gave in. It took him five weeks to learn to feed himself again.

The next task was to learn to walk. That took seven months and four days, but he didn’t do it alone.

“I got to learn to walk with my daughter,” he said.

Mills was asked to go to New York to watch a 5K run, but watching from the sidelines doesn’t seem to be in his vocabulary. His motto, printed on wristbands, says, “Never give up, never quit.”

So he walked it.

The Travis Mills Foundation is in the process of renovating the former Elizabeth Arden estate in Rome, Maine. Called Maine Chance Lodge, it will soon be called Maine Chance Retreat, and will help disabled veterans and military families.

Mills came to the Rotary Club and Sanford Junior High through the invitation of Rotarian Elias Thomas. At the conclusion of Mills’ Rotary talk, Thomas conveyed a Rotary honor, making Mills a Paul Harris Fellow.

Mills was also the recipient of a Legislative Sentiment delivered by Reps. Karen Gerrish and Matt Harrington.

Mills told Rotarians the mental toll was the hardest part – getting through the doubt of how to take his child to the playground, how not to be a burden.

“But you get over that hump,” he said. “I am not a sob story. Don’t pity me, please. I don’t hate the military. I don’t have any more bad days than anyone else.”

At the high school, students presented him with a check for $500, which they had raised for his foundation in two days, when they learned he’d be visiting.

— Senior Staff Writer Tammy Wells can be contacted at 324-4444 (local call in Sanford) or 282-1535, ext. 327 or twells@journaltribune.com.