“If I break a national record,” she says, “maybe they will stop writing about my eyes. It’s a matter of commitment. Some people have a bad attitude, and that’s their disability.”
Marla Runyan is thirty-one and legally blind. Yet in 1999, running the 1500 meters, she won gold at the Pan Am Games, finished fourth at the USA Track & Field Outdoor Championships, and tenth at the World Championships in Seville, Spain.
Sorry, Marla, but here we go with another list of all the things you can’t do: see the finish line, read a stopwatch, watch a tape of your races without sitting with your face practically against the TV screen.
And she is right to be angry that the focus always seems to be on the things she can’t do, when she has done so much.
Her medical condition is called Stargardt’s disease. It’s a progressive degeneration of the retina that has left her with a gaping hole in the middle of her visual field. She has 20-300 vision in one eye, 20-400 in the other. But in 2000 she won the USA Track & Field Indoor Championships at 3000 meters, leading wire to wire to win in 9:01.29.
“Please,” she asks, “think of me as an athlete, not a legally blind athlete.” And what an athletic life she has had.
As a nine-year-old in Camarillo, California, her vision began to go. At fourteen she couldn’t see well enough to follow a soccer ball, so she began to run track and compete in field events, setting a school record with a high jump of 5 feet 7 inches.
At San Diego State she broadened her focus to seven events—the heptathlon. When she lost the ability to see the hurdles, she counted the steps from the start to the first one and then on to the next, running almost by memory.
With the help of her mother, Valerie, she also succeeded in academics. She wore a magnifying device attached to her glasses so she could read large-print books, and her mother would help by writing out, in large type, the assigned reading material from her classes. She graduated cum laude from San Diego State in 1991 and then earned a master’s degree in education of the handicapped.
“The biggest thing her mother and I did was not to set up any artificial barriers for Marla,” says her father, Gary. “We let her find her own barriers. Some she found painfully. But she also found things she could do.”
Yes, like waterskiing and scuba diving. She even got a California driver’s license. And she also made the 2000 U.S. Olympic team, placing eighth in the 1500 meters in Sydney.
So often we set our goals based on what we see. Think about Marla Runyan. Her goals exist in a world largely unseen. She can barely make out the shape of the other competitors on the track, and so she must continually refine the runner’s intuition that is so critical to having a sense of where she and the others are in the race.
Don’t be too mad at me, Marla. I know you get tired of being held up as an example of how people can persevere and overcome, and I know I’m doing it to you again. But I’m impressed that someone who cannot see the tape at the end of the race can be dedicated enough to be the first through that unseen barrier.
Marla Runyan can barely see. But she never took her eyes off the prize.
53
Jamel Bradley
The ball swished through the net but Jamel Bradley didn’t hear it.
The thump-thump-thump of his basketball on the hard blacktop laid down an impressive rhythm that Jamel could feel. But he couldn’t hear it.
It is no surprise to me that Jamel Bradley has such a powerful, positive influence on young hearing-impaired kids. His role as a smooth shooting guard on the University of South Carolina basketball team plays a part, but the more critical factor is that he too is hearing impaired.
When Jamel was eighteen months old, he lost his ability to hear well. Running a 103-degree temperature for three days did him in. He grew up in a mostly silent world, feeling different and ashamed. Like most kids, he desperately wanted to fit in, especially as he grew older, but his hearing loss caused him to gradually withdraw.
“It was difficult. I built a wall around myself. I felt nobody wanted to talk to me when they saw my hearing aids. I was a loner. It took a while before I was able to reach out and touch people.”
At six foot two, 160 pounds, Jamel lacks a physically imposing presence, but his forte is not size. It’s his jump shot. Playing sports helped Jamel begin to move out of his quiet, solitary space.
He started playing basketball on a local playground in Beckley, West Virginia. Sharon Bradley, Jamel’s mom, says that her son’s love of basketball shifted into high gear when he was in elementary school. He’d come home, do his homework, then go to the YMCA to play ball. He was at the Y every chance he had. He kept improving and kept working, and soon his brother and his friends started inviting him to play in their games.
“Things started clicking. They were in junior high school and a couple years older than me. They told me to stay in the corner. They’d pass the ball to me and I’d shoot,” Jamel says.
He practiced and played every chance he got, and when he started high school he stepped into a leadership role, helping Woodrow Wilson High School in Beckley to back-to-back class AAA titles his final two seasons. His senior year he set the West Virginia high school record for free throw accuracy, connecting on 95 of 100 from the line. His coach, David Barkesdale, speaks highly of his former pupil.
“He never complained. I saw him take charges that would send a hearing aid flying one way and the other going in an opposite direction. He never used it as a crutch. He was an inspiration to all of us.”
When Jamel got to the University of South Carolina, he was fitted with digital, programmable, omnidirectional hearing aids that help him hear sounds from every direction. These aids have improved his hearing by 85 percent. He can hear his coach and his teammates and a whole lot more.
He now enjoys listening to rhythm-and-blues tunes, birds chirping, and traffic signals buzzing. At a rock concert a while back he complained the music was too loud—a nice problem for a young guy who communicated with his coach through hand signals. Those hand signals his coach used in high school are no longer necessary. Now his coach yelling at him sounds like sweet music.
In turn, the Southeastern Conference is now “hearing” from Bradley. In his sophomore year, Jamel was an occasional starter and led the team in scoring in four games. At one point near the end of the 1999–2000 season, he had connected on 36 of 84 three-point attempts (42.9 percent) and was 14 of 17 (82.4 percent) from the free throw line.
Today, Jamel Bradley inspires the hearing impaired— young and old. His success with the Gamecocks resonates with young kids throughout the country, and his words encourage them to manage their handicap differently than he did when he was their age. Jamel speaks frequently to groups of the hearing impaired in and around Columbia, South Carolina. He talks to struggling individual kids as well. He reached out to one young person in Florence, South Carolina, who was having trouble relating to classmates and teammates.
Jamel’s simple message: “Always wear your hearing aid.” He understands the struggle. He didn’t wear his because he desperately wanted to fit in.
“I let them know I’m in the same shoes they are,” he says. “They don’t wear hearing aids because they think people won’t talk to them. I tell them to keep their hearing aids and listen to what everyone says.”
Jamel Bradley earned a place on the United States Deaf Olympic Team, which competed in Rome in 1999. With his college career moving into his junior and senior years, who knows what he will achieve on the hardwood? What I do know is that, athletic success aside, he is already a hero to hearing-impaired kids and adults.
One of Jamel’s young friends, Christopher Thompson, put it this way: “It is great to know there is someone out there that’s the same as you.”
54
Donnell Finnaman
Despite asthma and nagging sore knees, Donnell Finnaman didn’t miss a practice in four years. Playing both offensive and defensive tackle in Class 1A North Carolina High School Athletic Associati
on men’s varsity competition for four years spoke of a passion to succeed and excel.
Watching the five-foot-six, 140-pound tackle pull out on a bootleg and clear the way for the quarterback run left no reason to doubt Coach Leonard Baker’s boasts of Donnell’s unusual talent. As one well-beaten opponent put it, “Finnaman is the best I’ve ever faced.”
It was not an easy thing to acknowledge. Donnell is a girl and she is deaf.
When she was born in Egg Harbor, New Jersey, she weighed two pounds. Her twin brother, Donovan, appeared twenty minutes later and tipped the scales at three pounds. Both little ones needed special care because of their premature arrival. Donovan had more difficulty because of respiratory troubles. At two, Donnell also developed complications in her hearing.
Her ears functioned normally, but the signals to the brain never arrived. She was diagnosed with neural nerve deafness. Doctors recommended she attend a special school away from home, in Trenton, New Jersey.
The separation from the family was difficult for her mother, Marchelle, and they soon moved to Fayetteville, North Carolina, and enrolled Donnell in the East North Carolina School for the Deaf (ENCSD) when she was in the third grade. “She was able to have a regular life, do the things that other children do, be a leader,” her mother says.
Donnell grew up with the label of tomboy. She loved football and perfected her tackling by taking on her twin brother in the backyard. After a few years she signed up for intramurals at ENCSD. By the eighth grade she had started talking to Baker about playing varsity football. He had no misgivings about her becoming part of the team.
“I knew that Donnell was serious, and that she was a talented athlete,” he recalls. The coach talked with Marchelle, checked with the state association to make sure there were no restrictions, and ran it past the rest of the squad, gaining unanimous approval.
“I asked her if she was sure,” says Marchelle. “I was afraid but proud that my daughter never really heard the word can’t.”
Donnell remembers the beginning challenge: “I had to show that I was physical and that I was not afraid to play with the boys and that I was tough.”
On the first day of practice, the freshman Donnell was behind the tackling dummy. A senior charged it, plowed his shoulder in, and knocked her down. She jumped up and signed (by pointing to her wrist) the phrase “one more time.” He tried again and she stood him up straight.
Playing football is not just a novelty or a publicity stunt for her. She was ranked as ENCSD’s top offensive lineman at the end of her junior season. “I have personal pride,” she signs, “but my greatest pride is playing a team sport. I want any focus on me to shift to the team.”
When football is over for the season, Finnaman will concentrate on basketball. She has played center for the Fighting Hornets for three years. In the spring, she will be a favorite to win the state Class 1A shot put title. She has earned this label by finishing among the top ten in the shot in the NCHSAA 1A Track championships for the past three years.
They love Donnell at ENCSD. Fans wave the foam rubber hands to spell the letters I-L-Y or “I Love You.” Donnell wants to be remembered “as a leader, a good athlete, and as a football player too.” She has single-handedly introduced the word “linewoman” to the world of varsity football.
“Some people say I’m special,” she says, “but I don’t see myself that way.”
I do, Donnell. You are a very special Companion in Courage. Few could accomplish what you have. Fewer still would tackle it.
SECTION 10
From the
Heart
55
Brian Grant
Professional athletes do a lot of good in their communities, and I wish that they got more publicity for their efforts. The bad stuff always gets in the newspapers or on TV, but the hours spent helping others just don’t seem to make a good story.
At least that’s the way the media seems to look at it. I see it, quite naturally, from the athlete’s side. And while I think players should be acknowledged for their positive contributions, I know that’s not their motivation. They get plenty of cheers and applause elsewhere.
They do it to do good. The giving of their time and compassion comes back tenfold in emotional payoffs. And while I heartily support all the wonderful programs athletes conceive and execute, I’m most thrilled and moved when athletes dedicate themselves to children. That’s how I learned about Brian Grant and why I’m proud to include him as a Companion in Courage.
Dash Thomas, a twelve-year-old boy suffering from cancer, first introduced me to Brian. During the NBA lockout in 1998 I heard Dash say that Brian, a forward for the Portland Trail Blazers, was his best friend. Because so many of the children that I met at Buffalo General’s cancer ward numbered among my best friends, I decided I needed to know more about Brian Grant.
During the lockout Brian started driving to Sublimity, Oregon, a one-hour ride from Portland, to visit Dash, who had been diagnosed with brain cancer. Dash, a young white kid, and Brian, a black NBA power forward who wore dread-locks, forged a firm friendship. They became each other’s heroes.
When the lockout ended, Brian wanted to get Dash to a game. Unfortunately, that never happened. His young friend died in February. Brian dedicated his season to Dash Thomas.
The NBA lockout will be remembered as a labor dispute, a fight between millionaire players and billionaire owners. Brian Grant got something entirely different from it. “Because of the lockout, Dash died before he could come to a game. On the other hand, without the lockout, I wouldn’t have had as much time to get to know him,” he said. “There was something about the way he carried himself. He wasn’t like a twelve-year-old kid. It was like he was older. His courage—everything about him—was amazing. He was an inspiration. My relationship with Dash changed my life.”
During the playoffs, Grant battled the best power forward in the league, Karl Malone, to a standoff. During their epic struggle one of Malone’s famous elbows caught Brian in the right eye, opening a gash that took six stitches to close. It also opened a window into his psyche.
While many of Brian’s fellow NBA players played AAU (Amateur Athletic Union) basketball and in the much-touted summer camps before being drafted, Brian was cutting tobacco and baling hay back in Georgetown, Ohio. He watched his dad and uncles weld boxcars—hard, nasty, physical labor. He saw them, with no first-aid kits available and no time to waste, slice potatoes in half and put them on their cuts to ease the pain from their burns. One night Grant’s father came home with a bandage over his eye. He had been hit by a piece of hot metal.
So a six-stitch gash? What should that mean next to the struggles of Brian’s father, his uncles, and a frail twelve-year-old named Dash, hospitalized in Sublimity, Oregon? Brian’s attitude? “Stitch it up and let’s play!”
Brian continues to excel in the NBA, though he now plays with the Miami Heat, but he also stands out in his work with children.
Brian has many young friends and a growing list of community leaders who respect him. His future holds so much promise. But he is never, ever far from his past, never really removed from family in Georgetown, Ohio, or separated from the memory of a boy named Dash.
56
Jeannette Jay
Every day for years I have strapped my kids into car seats for their safety. Now I find out that Mighty Pete Sawicki would have his fourteen-year-old daughter do handstands on the back of his motorcycle while riding in parades. Is that wild or what?
For Pete’s little girl Jeannette, it was just one more experience that reinforced her need for constant activity and attention. In fact, if she were in the same school today in the Genesee-Fillmore neighborhood of Buffalo, the powers that be would have slapped that “attention deficit disorder” label on her. “I was this hyperactive kid who couldn’t sit still,” she recalls. “I was doing cartwheels in the classrooms, headstands on roofs.”
Her sister Christelle, now Sister Christelle and principal of Blessed Sacr
ament School in Buffalo, puts her memories of Jeannette to work in a positive fashion. “I see kids like that now and see potential, and I always share with kids her story because I feel education doesn’t always prepare us for what God wants us to do in life,” she says.
Jeannette was a handful, fearless and spirited. She could be dramatic when she needed the spotlight. She recalls drinking a bottle of ink to get the attention of her fourth-grade friends because they were ignoring her cartwheels. She could also test the limits of those who loved her—she simply could not sit still. Eventually the nuns asked that Jeannette leave Transfiguration School because of how difficult she was to handle.
No telling of her story is complete without the now-famous incident in the German Day parade. She was fourteen and ready to perform her motorcycle stunt with Mighty Pete.
“He used to signal me to kick up on the back of the bike, and I’d do a handstand; my foot would rest on his shoulder,” she says. “I wasn’t paying attention and …he pulled away. I went to kick to the handstand and I went flat on my face. I was bleeding all over the place. He wanted me to be great. So he said, ‘Get back on that bike. I don’t care if you are bleeding.’ Everyone in the audience was clapping. ‘Yeah, little girl.’ I’m fourteen years old, blood all over the place, and I got up on that bike, and it made me tough, and my dad made me who I am today.”
After attending business school and working in a local health club, Jeannette left Buffalo to travel with “The Great Unis,” a strongman show in which she performed her gymnastics. Her athletic abilities helped her learn to be an accomplished tightwire performer and trapeze artist. She appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show and in the Ringling Bros. circus. She settled in Pittsburgh, where she began to follow her dream to coach and teach gymnastics to others.
Companions in Courage Page 18