by Chris Norton
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“I have never seen 18-22 year old males so mature, respectful, and dedicated to a friendship. My father always told me ‘if you want to take a look at yourself, look at your friends.’ Chris Norton has great friends because he is a great man.”
~ Megan Gill, PT, DPT, Clinical Lead Physical Therapist for Spinal Cord Injury, Mayo Clinic
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Despite our trust, when Chris wanted to go tubing over Memorial Day weekend with a big group of guys, Deb and I were concerned. Chris could get sun burnt, dehydrated, or if they didn’t watch him closely enough, he could tip over and drown because he couldn’t protect himself. Deb and I remembered all too well how young and careless we were in college, and Chris had to rely on other people to look out for him while having a good time. We were scared.
We talked to Chris, we talked to his friends, and I reminded them that his body didn’t sweat and couldn’t cool itself down. I knew Chris was tired of us worrying about every little detail when things managed to take care of themselves, but the truth was, we’d worry whether he was hurt or not, because that was our job as his parents. It eased our minds knowing that by that point, Chris’s friends had taken care of him for a year. They knew he needed a home healthcare person, and they recognized his additional needs, so they took our hovering in stride. Taking care of Chris wasn’t a big deal to them, and they made it work.
Every summer when Chris was at Luther, he stayed in Decorah because he had a great system worked out with PT and OT that we couldn’t replicate at home. He also felt a little claustrophobic at our house because we lived in the country where we didn’t have sidewalks, so at home, he couldn’t go anywhere on his own. On campus, he could go out his door, get onto the track around the football field, and do laps. He could go to the wellness and athletic center where his RT300 bicycle was kept, or have someone help him get into the pool. He could also access the student union and the rest of campus. Plus, all of his college buddies were in Decorah.
When Chris was unable to accept his Heroes of the Heartland award because he was busy with school, Deb and I were honored to take his place. When we were contacted by the American Red Cross and looked at the other “heroes” being honored, we were really humbled for Chris to be recognized and included in such a fabulous group of individuals. We all felt truly blessed that his story had touched so many lives.
I had other speaking engagements that came out of my experience with Chris. I was the first non-Mayo employee asked to speak at their annual meeting. That was really special because they telecast the speech to their thirty-six thousand employees throughout the country. They wanted me to share Chris’s story and our experiences at Mayo. I also spoke at the 2012 Fields of Faith event in Bondurant, and I delivered a meaningful message about overcoming adversity and facing challenges. Even though Chris was hardwired to be optimistic, and he faced each day with a sense of hope and joy, faith was what got him through. I wanted the students to trust God, and to reach out to friends and support groups in order to face and overcome their individual challenges.
Before Chris initially returned to Luther, Sandy, a local certified nursing assistant who insisted on helping when Chris went back to school, volunteered to help Chris every Saturday. She just fell in love with him and his story. Sandy wrote us a card that said she’d volunteered with the idea of helping Chris, but in the end, he helped her. She’d looked at her life and compared it to what Chris dealt with, and the fact that he never had a bad day made a real impact on her. His attitude was truly contagious, and we did our part in spreading his good news.
We’d come a long way and had further to go, but we’d reached a point where looking back and taking stock helped keep our feet on the ground and our eyes facing forward. Sharing our experiences with others while retaining faith and hope for Chris’s continued improvement helped Deb and me accept the reality of his situation and spread his message of hope.
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For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
~Jeremiah 29:11 NIV
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GOD KEPT putting people in my path who changed my life for the better. The Lynch family altered my career trajectory when they invited me to speak at their annual Lynch Family Foundation benefit and golf outing in June 2012. When I pressed them for details, they said they wanted me to share my story and tell people a little bit about myself.
I was nervous because I’d given two prior informal talks that I felt weren’t very good or my best, but I really wanted to do well, especially when I found out that Paul Rhoads, Iowa State’s head football coach, and another professional speaker would be in attendance. This was the first speech I took seriously and practiced for, not only because of the other speakers, but because I thought sharing my story could help advocate for change.
After my speech, I was totally blown away when the Lynch Family Foundation presented me, as the event beneficiary, with an accessible tandem bicycle and some money. When we first met, I mentioned a goal of mine was to purchase an accessible bike, get outside on Decorah’s trails, and eventually participate in the Des Moines Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI). The event went really well. I was so grateful for the bike, and I think the speech was well received.
Later, at the event recap with Gary Lynch, and Jason and Erin Golly of the Lynch Family Foundation, Jason said if I wanted to put on my own charity fundraiser, they’d be happy to help. They offered food and support for whatever I needed; they would back any cause I wanted to support. His suggestion made something click in my brain, and I thought, yeah, there’s a lot of need, and I really want to help.
When I first came home from Mayo and had to drive two hours from Des Moines just to use the RT300 bike, I began to understand what most spinal cord injured people faced every day. I had a friend from rehab, for example, who drove two hours to Mayo and back just to use the bike I had in my own room. Going through the whole injury and rehab process, I saw so many people get left behind or plateau because their insurance stopped paying for therapy. They weren’t blessed with the human or financial resources I had due to my friends, my family, and the insurance policy. I felt humbled and sad for those without the same opportunity to get better. The need was huge, and thanks to the Lynch Family Foundation, I was suddenly in a position to help.
Whenever I thought about what life would look like if I’d gotten hurt at Central College and had been flown to a local hospital instead of Mayo, I cringed. At Mayo, I had access to the people, the resources, and the equipment to recover as much as possible, and thanks to my insurance, I had the means to continue rehab. The rehab clinics I’d been to around the state of Iowa lacked the better technology and equipment to help people with more severe injuries. There were numerous people who needed better equipment and wanted to get better, so if we could get more advanced equipment into existing rehab clinics in locations where people with spinal cord injuries needed it, we’d make a difference in the community.
My parents were the first ones I talked to about starting a foundation. They both had business degrees, my mom worked with a foundation back home, and they had friends with experience, connections, and a good understanding of how foundations worked. At the time, I had yet to take my first business class, so I had no idea how to get started other than my own research. I was intimately involved in creating the name and the mission, as well as determining the direction of the foundation and the people we wanted to help. My family worked to file the paperwork with the government for our 501(c)(3) status, figure out how we should run the foundation, and brainstorm who would serve on the board.
With the support of my mom and dad, the SCI CAN Foundation was born with the mission to aid in providing equipment to facilities where people who wanted to use it would have access. SCI CAN stands for Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) Christopher Anderson Norton (CAN). Our focus was to locate clinics and assist them in paying
for advanced equipment that could help people with their health, recovery, and wellness. At that point, I never saw making a career out of the foundation, I just wanted to organize and influence people to contribute to the cause.
After the Lynch Family Foundation planted the idea, and with my family and friends behind me, we decided to hold an event in Decorah to raise funds to purchase an RT300 bicycle for Northeast Iowa. Because I received occupational therapy at Winneshiek Medical Center and I was familiar with their rehab facility, I knew they were a good choice because of their client base, neutral location, easy access, available staff, and flexible hours. We wanted to purchase the bike because it could not only help with spinal cord injuries, but with strokes, Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, and cerebral palsy. We concentrated on equipment that served a broader range of ailments, especially in more rural areas.
Holding an event in Decorah made sense because I spent the summer there focusing on therapy, and I wanted to give back to the town that had been so supportive of me in my recovery. We organized a bike/run/walk on the trails around town, and with the help of friends, family, the Lynch Family Foundation, and Winneshiek Medical Center’s marketing department and foundation, we started marketing the event. We distributed fliers, and talked to local businesses, radio stations, and the newspaper to spread the word.
We intended to raise money through free will donations to SCI CAN, by selling T-shirts and wristbands, through sponsorships, and a silent auction. We set up tents along the trail with activities to make it as fun as possible for the participants. There was no RSVP, and no official start time, it was just come ride, run, or walk. The event went great and we raised enough for the bike, but there was so much need that a one-time event didn’t make a dent.
We started out small with the bike event in Decorah and set our sights on Des Moines. The following winter, my parents set up a dinner event in Des Moines with speakers, entertainment, and an auction that was very successful and much easier to run than an outdoor event. So, we stopped doing the bike/run/walk and switched to having dinners in both Decorah and Des Moines. Iowa was our first priority because we knew firsthand how great a need there was for advanced technology, equipment, and facilities in our home state.
A natural progression was to grow our foundation throughout the region, then eventually coast-to-coast because the need existed everywhere. However, our focus remained helping those with spinal cord injuries find help close to home so they didn’t have to relocate outside of Iowa. I knew from experience that while going to Denver, Chicago, New Jersey, or Atlanta were all good options, the ability to stay in a person’s home state where they could receive support from family and friends was vital.
After reaching out to different rehab facilities and reviewing the equipment they had onsite, we set up an application process for clinics to apply for grant money to purchase needed equipment. In choosing our subsequent recipients, we asked the facilities to tell us what they thought they needed through a grant application. Then our medical professional board members assessed the applications. It felt awesome to award the first grant and to set a goal, work hard, and provide equipment to a facility that really wanted and appreciated our help. The applications weren’t rolling in at first, but through media coverage of the events, word of mouth, and social media, we raised awareness on a grass-roots level.
As I started to get more and more requests for speaking engagements, and I got a little more comfortable with the prepared speech that evolved from the one I gave at the Lynch Family Foundation event, I began to get excited about speaking. After seeing the impact and the response I got when I first presented that speech with everyone jumping up to give me a standing ovation and people crying in the audience, I felt confident spreading my message of hope and faith.
While in school, I operated as the face of the foundation and shared my vision with the board. I did a lot of the marketing, event planning, and speaking on behalf of the foundation. My public speaking and the foundation complimented each other. While I tried to separate my motivational and public speaking from the foundation, starting the foundation was a part of my story, so that always came up when I gave a speech. A lot of the people who wanted to help SCI CAN were influenced by my story, and public speaking was a huge part of being the face and the overall leader of the organization.
It was a heady rush to meet other people, share my story, and then have kids and adults tell me how inspired they were, and how my message changed their lives and gave them a new attitude on a deeply emotional level. Seeing the impact of my story on people’s faces made me think that maybe I could make a career out of speaking, which was ironic considering I used to have a really bad lisp and my worst grade in college was in my public speaking class.
From talking to others, like Iowa State’s Paul Rhoads, Iowa educator, coach, and speaker, Aaron Thomas, as well as Ohio State football coach, Urban Meyer, I learned that as long as I had a good story to tell, how I presented it wasn’t as important as the story and the message, but I knew I could improve. People enjoyed my speeches even when I felt they weren’t my best. Knowing I could do better really spurred me to make improvements and attempt to be more impactful.
If I could share my message, empower others, and travel, I felt like I was doing something to help others. I talked to my mom and dad about my future, and they agreed it was a good idea and the right direction for me. My message covered a broad range of people and demographics—middle school students, high school students, college students, business people—so it was something we were excited to share.
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“The message that Chris has is special because overcoming adversity is so universal. Everybody has adversity in their life, everybody gets discouraged.”
~ Joe Gilson, Lifelong friend
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My path developed slowly at first because I was still in school. People and organizations asked me to speak at events or to different groups, so I wasn’t actively marketing myself, but through word of mouth, I was asked to do more and more speaking. It started with Fellowship of Christian Athletes’ sports camps in Minnesota. They really liked how I spoke at one camp, so they asked me to speak at another, and then a banquet, and then a fundraiser, so I stayed busy with FCA. They loved how the kids responded to my message and after doing it more and more, I got better and better.
I offered to speak at my hometown high school and middle school, and through personal connections of my parents and friends, I was asked to speak on a pretty regular basis at churches and schools. Those events were a great training ground because I didn’t want to start a professional career until I had enough practice and had established some credibility. Once we started the foundation, we set up a website with a page where people could request me to speak, but most requests came through people who followed me on CaringBridge, people who followed my Twitter or Facebook posts, and people who’d heard about me through articles in the newspapers and stories on TV. They’d hear my story, go to my website, find my contact information, and send me an e-mail.
As time went by, we started to realize that what we were doing with SCI CAN was great, but a lot of people needed more than just equipment. Transportation was a huge issue, as some people needed a driver and a helper to get them set up on the equipment. Our mission’s focus on placing advanced equipment in rehab facilities didn’t allow us to help people who felt depressed or unmotivated, or those who didn’t have resources, insurance, or friends to take them places.
We expanded our mission to include improving quality of life, health, wellness, and recovery of those with neurological disorders so we could serve those with the greatest need. For example, we took a girl who really needed an uplifting experience to Ironwood’s Sports Wheelchair Camp where she was able to meet other people in similar situations, do something fun, get out of the house, and step out of her comfort zone. The experience opened my eyes to the endless activities that were accessible like boating, kayaking, and zip lining.
I constantly met people and heard stories about spinal cord injuries and people in need, it was just non-stop. Every story compelled me to keep helping others and expand our reach. Spinal cord injuries and recovery problems wouldn’t be fixed overnight or even within a couple of years, which was why I wanted to make raising money and awareness a lifelong mission.
SCI CAN was blessed to have the support of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and we were grateful to Courage in Sports for their continued support of our foundation. The Lynch Family Foundation was our biggest supporter. The year after the event where they surprised me with a tandem bike, they asked me back to give a speech, recap what I’d done in the past year, and surprised me again with a $10,000 check for SCI CAN.
Urban Meyer kept in contact with me after I talked with Tebow and after I left the hospital, something he didn’t have to do. Once he landed the Ohio State head coaching job in 2012, I figured we’d get disconnected. Instead, we became closer and he even invited my friends and me to Ohio State. We visited him in his office, toured the facilities, the stadium, and held the Heisman trophy.