My grandfather was born blind. He had a little bit of vision, but he was, he was legally blind. He liked to push the envelope a little bit. He didn’t allow that to stop him from doing anything, sometimes to his detriment.
You know, he — as a young man, when he was in high school, he really really wanted to play basketball. I mean, my grandfather absolutely loved sports. Sports fanatic. And because he was legally blind, the school wouldn’t allow him to even try out. And so he convinced the coach to at least unlock, you know, the gymnasium for him after school so he could, you know — he could just th- you know, shoot hoops on his own. He wasn’t gonna try out. Knowing that the coach was gonna see him play. And through that, my grandfather got on the, the basketball team and he was able to, to play like he wanted, knowing that he was gonna be able to do it, and I, I think that’s really fantastic and also just kind of a theme in his life.
When he was 17, I remember — not I remember, but I remember the story — he was on the ice with some friends on Rainbow Lake and he actually fell through the ice and broke his neck. And he was in the hospital and he was paralyzed from the neck down. And they didn’t think that he was ever going to walk again or be able to do anything, and he actually ended up making a full recovery. I have the news clipping from, from the accident and the picture that they chose of him was a photograph from a basketball game, and just talked about everything that had happened and where he was in his recovery. It’s kind of incredible that he was able to come back from that, especially back then.