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He was alive, but his prognosis was
grim. While his sister, Christal, seemed fine, Christopher had
gone for at least 15 minutes without breathing and had undoubtedly
suffered extensive brain damage. Doctors diagnosed him with
cerebral palsy and concluded that he would never walk, talk, move
or even think for himself.
Christopher’s father took one
look at his frail son and walked out of the hospital and away from
his 10-year marriage. Linda Coleman and her seven children were on
their own. Despite the overwhelming obstacles ahead, Linda never
once considered placing her helpless son in an impersonal
institution. Instead, she worked two jobs to provide for her
family and still made time to drive her two-year-old boy to the
Association for Retarded Citizens near Baton Rouge, La., where
specialists discovered he wasn’t as mentally retarded as doctors
feared.
At the age of five, Christopher
enrolled in an elementary school with a special class for
handicapped students 40 miles from home. Three afternoons a week,
his mother also drove him to speech and physical therapy. But any
hope he had evaporated when he entered a state-run school for the
disabled at six years old.
“I remember the blank walls,”
he says. “I stared at them for hours while I sat strapped like a
prisoner in my wheelchair. I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t talk
and I couldn’t move. No one talked to me. No one even wiped my
nose or took me to the bathroom. I often sat in my soiled clothes
for an entire day, embarrassed and frustrated.”
His mother never knew how badly he
was treated at school. He couldn’t communicate with her, and the
aides explained his soiled clothes as an accident on the bus ride
home.
Although he always felt his
mother’s love, he defined himself by the way the world treated
him. “I never felt I was worth much,” he says. “I wondered
why I was born like this, what I had done to deserve this
condition.”
By this time, his twin sister was
in first grade and learning to read — and Christopher felt left
out. At night, when his family was asleep, he crawled into the
bathroom and studied the letters on the pages of his sister’s
books. It wasn’t until he was 14, however, that his mother
discovered he could read.
He revealed his ability to read by
reading a weather bulletin off the tv during a bad storm.
“My mom rushed over to me, crying and laughing at the same
time,” he recalls.
He entered Nichols State
University’s pre-law program after graduating from high school.
At the end of his sophomore year Christopher made the bold move to
Marietta, Ga., to finish his education at Southern Polytechnic
State University. It was at Southern Polytechnic that Jonathan
Carter became his personal assistant.
“Jonathan helped me confront my
fear of who I was, disabilities and all,” he says.
Jonathan spoke to him kindly, never
becoming frustrated or annoyed with his physical limitations. One
day, when Christopher sneezed all over him uncontrollably,
Jonathan just softly said, “It’s OK.”
Those simple words echoed in his
head. “It’s OK. It’s OK that I can’t move my body the way
other people move. It’s OK that I can’t speak as clearly as
other people. I’m OK just the way I am,” he thought.
Christopher no longer resents his
wheelchair or his physical condition. He says, “It hasn’t been
easy living a life in a wheelchair, but it has been a life of
freedom rather than confinement. I can truly say that I have joy
in my heart.”
Christopher Coleman lives in
Acworth, Ga., and speaks to businesses, schools, and civic groups
around the world through “Unlimited Leadership”
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