The Power of Determination

Glenn Cunningham's 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, really - for
the terrible fire had devastated the lower half of his body.

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, no control, 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 fresh air. This
day, instead of sitting there, he threw himself from the chair. He
pulled himself across the grass, dragging his legs behind 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!
(courtsey: Burt Dubin)