Contributed by: Rahul D (bruntno1 @ yahoo.com)
This story should be printed and left where you will see it often - and then everytime you come across a project you think you cannot successfully complete read this story again.
Eight-year-old Glenn Cunningham raced into a burning schoolhouse to rescue his big brother. When he regained consciousness five hours later, his brother was dead and Glenn's horribly burned legs lay limp and without feeling.
Specialists urged his parents to have Glenn's legs amputated immediately
- he would never walk again
- but Glenn pleaded against them.
Even though the toes of his left foot were gone and the bone supporting the ball of his left foot practically destroyed, Glenn was determined to walk again.
That was the summer of 1919.
One week later Glenn announced he was ready to stand up. His father lifted him out of bed, stood him upright and let go.
Glenn crumpled to the floor.
Every day Glenn's parents carefully rubbed his dead limbs.
Every day for weeks, they repeated the lifting-falling exercise.
Then one day, for a few seconds, Glenn Cunningham stood on his own.
A few days later Glenn took a few small, shaky steps.
His parents kept on rubbing his legs. He ate carefully and began to push himself hard, running everywhere he went
- to the fields,
- to the store,
- to school.
In 1930, with no toes on his left foot and almost missing a major bone, Glenn Cunningham set a high school record for the mile run, 4:24.7.
He enrolled in Kansas University and two years later qualified for the Olympics with a United States record-setting mile of 4:11.1.
Despite tonsillitis at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1932, he still finished fourth.
He defeated milers around the world, repeatedly breaking his own records.
In his early thirties he retired, holding the world mile record of 4:04.4.
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