3. • Curt Marsh - A former American football offensive
tackle. Curt Marsh was selected in the first round by the
Oakland Raiders out of the University of Washington in
the 1981 NFL Draft. He has had more than 30 surgeries,
including a leg amputation. Marsh wears a Super Bowl
ring from his playing days with the Oakland Raiders. He
also wears a prosthetic leg which resulted from a terrible
ankle injury during those same playing days. He is now a
motivational speaker, sharing with executives and
teenagers alike the lessons he has learned from his
journey through college and pro sports, and eventually, a
career ending injury which led to the amputation of his
leg. Now competes in events for amputee athletes and is
a gold medal power lifter.
4. Deafness
• Helen Keller
• Ludwig Van Beethoven
• Thomas Edison
– Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931)
was an American inventor of Dutch origin and businessman who
developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the
world, including the phonograph and a long lasting light bulb. In
school, the young Edison's mind often wandered. He was noted
to be terrible at mathematics, unable to focus, and had difficulty
with words and speech. This ended Edison's three months of
official schooling. The cause of Edison's deafness has been
attributed to a bout of scarlet fever during childhood and
recurring untreated middle ear infections.
6. • Aron Ralston - (born October 27, 1975) is an American
mountain climber who became famous in May 2003
when he was forced to amputate his lower right arm with
a dull knife in order to free himself after his arm became
trapped by a boulder. Ralston documented his
experience in a book titled Between a Rock and a Hard
Place. While he was on a hiking trip in Blue John
Canyon, Utah a boulder fell and pinned his right forearm,
crushing it. After five days of trying to lift and break the
boulder, a dehydrated and delirious Ralston bowed his
arm against a stone and snapped the bone. Using the
dull blade on his multiuse tool, he cut the soft tissue
around the break.
7. • Rick Allen - Richard John Cyril "Rick" Allen (born
November 1, 1963, Dronfield, Derbyshire, England) is
the drummer for the British rock band Def Leppard. He is
famous for having overcome the complete amputation of
his left arm to continue playing with the band, which
subsequently went on to its greatest popular success.
On December 31, 1984, on the way to a New Year's eve
party at his family's home in Sheffield, UK, 21-year-old
Allen was racing his Chevrolet Corvette against a friend
in separate vehicle with his girlfriend in the passenger
seat. He then lost control of his car, which sailed over a
stone wall, and into a field, causing him to be thrown
from the car and resulting in the severing of his left arm.
8. • Casey Pieretti - An actor and stuntman who has had a
life full of tragedy and triumph. At the age of nineteen,
while on a college basketball scholarship, Casey was
struck by a drunk driver. The result of this car wreck was
the loss of Casey's right leg below the knee. Casey, a
below knee amputee, skated from San Diego, California
to Washinton D.C. on inline skates in 1993. In the
hospital, “they thought that I was in denial, that I was
thinking like a person who had two legs all their lives and
not like a person who now had one leg, whereas I was
thinking like a person who now had one leg and I was
thinking that these are the things I intended to do and I
did. Even when I was in hospital, I was deciding to be a
triathlete, which is what I did after I got out of the
hospital.”
9. • Bethany Hamilton - Bethany Meilani Hamilton (born
February 8, 1990) is an American surfer. She is known
for surviving a shark attack in which she lost her left arm,
and for overcoming the serious and debilitating injury to
return to surfing. On October 31, 2003, Hamilton went for
a morning surf along Tunnels Beach, Kauai. Around 7:10
a.m., she was lying sideways on her surfboard with her
left arm dangling in the water, when a tiger shark
attacked her, ripping her left arm off just below the
shoulder. Just eight weeks after the incident, she
returned to her board and went surfing again. In July of
2004 Hamilton won the ESPY Award for Best Comeback
Athlete of the Year. She was presented with a special
courage award at the 2004 Teen Choice Awards.
Hamilton still aspires to become a professional surfer
10. • Christopher Reeve - Christopher D'Olier Reeve (September 25,
1952 – October 10, 2004) was an American actor, director,
producer, and writer. He portrayed Superman - Kal-El - Clark Kent in
four films, from 1978 to 1987. In the 1980s, he also starred in
several films, including Somewhere in Time (1980), Deathtrap
(1982), The Bostonians (1984), and Street Smart (1987). In May
1995, Christopher Reeve was paralyzed in an accident during an
equestrian competition. He was confined to a wheelchair for the rest
of his life. He lobbied on behalf of people with spinal cord injuries,
and for human embryonic stem cell research after this accident. He
founded the Christopher Reeve Foundation and co-founded the
Reeve-Irvine Research Center. Reeve died at age 52 on October
10, 2004 from cardiac arrest caused by a systemic infection.
