Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Gabrielle Giffords ‘Did Not Look Sick’ in First Public Appearance Since Injury

“She did not look sick at all,” an ABC reporter said of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who made her first appearance at a public event today after having been shot in the head nearly seven months ago in Tuscon.

Although there were no television cameras on site at Space Center Houston, where Giffords’s husband Mark Kelly and the other Space Shuttle Endeavour astronauts were being honored, ABC did have Gina Sunseri on the scene.

According to Sunseri, Giffords, who was dressed casually in jeans and sneakers, sat in a wheelchair most of the time, but stood to hug and kiss her husband as he received his Spaceflight Medal for returning safely from his recent mission. “She was in a wheelchair but she was very animated, she was smiling, she was chatting with people next to her,” the reporter noted.

Giffords, who received a standing ovation from the hundreds of guests in attendance at the ceremony as she was wheeled in, has been staying in Houston for continued rehabilitation following her release from an area hospital earlier this month.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.