Nothing Could Stop This Man
After suffering severe burns on
his legs at the age of five, Glenn Cunningham was given up
on by doctors who believed he would be a hopeless cripple destined
to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. "He will never
be able to walk again," they said. "No
chance."
The doctors examined his legs,
but they had no way of looking into Glenn Cunningham's heart.
He didn't listen to the doctors and set out to walk again. Lying
in bed, his skinny, red legs covered with scar tissue, Glenn vowed,
"Next week, I'm going
to get out of bed. I'm going to walk." And he did just that.
His mother tells of how she used
to push back the curtain and look out the window to watch Glenn reach
up and take hold of an old plow in the yard. With a hand on each
handle, he began to make his gnarled and twisted legs function. And with
every step a
step of pain, he came closer to walking. Soon he began to trot;
before long he was running. When he started to run, he became even more
determined.
"I always believed that I could
walk, and I did. Now I'm going to run faster than anybody has ever run."
And did he ever.
He became a great miler who, in
1934, set the world's record of 4:06. He was honoured as the outstanding
athlete of the century at Madison Square Garden.
By Jeff Yalden
from A Cup of Chicken Soup for the Soul
Copyright 1996 by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen & Barry
Spilchuk