Perseverance...
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CARL BRASHEAR: "Sometimes I would come back from a run, and my artificial leg would have a puddle of blood from my stump. I wouldn't go to sick bay. In that year, if I had gone to sick bay, they would have written me up. I didn't go to sick bay. I'd go somewhere and hide and soak my leg in a bucket of hot water with salt in it--an old remedy. Then I'd get up the next morning and run" (in 1970 he became a US Navy master diver--and he only had one leg).

DICK & RICK HOYT are a father-and-son team from Massachusetts who together compete just about continuously in marathon races. And if they’re not in a marathon they are in a triathlon — that daunting, almost superhuman, combination of 26.2 miles of running, 112 miles of bicycling, and 2.4 miles of swimming. Together they have climbed mountains, and once trekked 3,735 miles across America.
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FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT, paralyzed from the waist down, was the 32nd President of the United States. Elected to four terms in office, he served from 1933 to 1945 and is the only U.S. president to have served more than two terms.

JASON McELWAIN, nicknamed "J-Mac" (born October 1, 1988), is a young man with autism who made national news in 2006 when he played for four minutes during a high school basketball game and scored twenty points.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngzyhnkT_jY
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CHRISTY BROWN (1932-1981) Disabled at birth by athetoid cerebral palsy he eventually gained some mobility and learned to write using his foot. His autobiography
My Left Foot became an instant success and was followed by Down All the Days, A Shadow on Summer and Wild Grow the Lilies; he was also an accomplished painter.


STEPHEN HAWKING (1942- ) Diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's Disease) at age 21 he was given two years to live. Three years later he graduated with his PhD from Cambridge University and is one of today's great physicists.
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STEVIE WONDER (1950- ) Blind since birth he won five Grammys in 1974 for You Are the Sunshine of My Life; he continues to be one of the world's most popular vocal musicians

JIM ABBOTT was born without a right hand he achieved a distinguished athletic career as a pitcher for Team USA for the Pan-American games, the California Angels, the White Sox; and ensured his place in the Baseball Hall of Fame by pitching a no-hitter for the New York Yankees in 1993.
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RAYMOND HU is a twenty-one-year-old artist with Down’s Syndrome. Raymond has been studying Chinese brush painting with renowned San Francisco artist Lampo Leong since 1990.  He has developed a uniquely free and expressive style of painting that has won much critical acclaim. 


CHRISTOPHER REEVE was an American actor, director, producer, and writer. Paralyzed in an accident , 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.