The power of determination (true story):
The little country schoolhouse was heated by an old-fashioned,
pot-bellied coal stove. A little boy had the job of coming to
school early each day to start the fire and warm the room before
his teacher and his classmates arrived.
One morning they arrived to find the schoolhouse engulfed in flames.
They dragged the unconscious little boy out of the flaming
building more dead than alive. He had major burns over
the lower half of his body and was taken to a nearby county hospital.
From his bed the dreadfully burned, semi-conscious little boy
faintly heard the doctor talking to his mother. The doctor told his
mother that her son would surely die, which was for the best,
for the terrible fire had devastated the lower half of hisbody.
But the brave boy didn’t want to die. He made up his mind that
he would survive. Somehow, to the amazement of the physician, he
did survive. When the mortal danger was past, he again heard the
doctor and his mother speaking quietly. The mother was told that
since the fire had destroyed so much flesh in the lower part of his body,
it would almost be better if he had died, since he was
doomed to be a lifetime cripple with no use at all of his lower limbs.
Once more the brave boy made up his mind. He would not be a cripple.
He would walk. But unfortunately from the waist down, he had
no motor ability. His thin legs just dangled there, all but lifeless.
Ultimately he was released from the hospital.
Every day his mother would massage his little legs,
but there was no feeling, nocontrol, nothing. Yet his determination that
he would walk was as strong as ever.When he wasn’t in bed,
he was confined to a wheelchair. One sunny day his mother wheeled him
out into the yard to get some freshair. This day, instead of sitting there,
he threw himself from the chair. He pulled himself across the grass,
dragging his legsbehind him.
He worked his way to the white picket fence bordering their lot.
With great effort, he raised himself up on the fence. Then, stake
by stake, he began dragging himself along the fence, resolved that
he would walk. He started to do this every day until he wore a
smooth path all around the yard beside the fence.There was nothing he wanted more than
to develop life in those legs.
Ultimately through his daily massages, his iron persistence
and his resolute determination, he did develop the ability to stand
up, then to walk haltingly, then to walk by himself and then to run.
He began to walk to school, then to run to school,
to run for the sheer joy of running. Later in college he made the track team.
Still later in Madison Square Garden this young man who was not
expected to survive, who would surely never walk, who could never
hope to run – this determined young man, Dr. Glenn Cunningham,
ran the world’s fastest mile**!
