In part 1 yesterday, we saw a young, strong-willed and positive boy use his character and strength to reach goals that may have seemed to some impossible. This boy inspired those around him to reach their goals, and have positive and strong characters themselves.
Today things don’t go so well for the boy, yet his character remains UN-changed and as positive as ever.
… Our circle of athletic friends was crushed. This kind of event wasn’t supposed to happen to someone at age eighteen—let alone someone like Terry!
The evening after Terry’s surgery to remove his leg, I was in his hospital room with a couple of my close friends and about twenty other friends and colleagues from school. It is a moment forever etched in my mind. The mood was somber. Teenage boys are Terry short on words at the best of times, but this was… What could you say? “It’s okay, Terry; you will be all right.” What a bunch of crap, I thought. This isn’t happening! This is so unfair! My head was pounding from all the screaming I was doing inside my thoughts. We all just stood there and stared at the floor, tears rolling down our cheeks.
Then, right on cue, Terry started to do what he had always done. He started talking about what was going on and how he was going to fight the cancer that temporarily sidelined him—how he had already talked to a guy at the university who played wheelchair basketball (a guy who turned out to be Rick Hansen—another very famous Canadian because of Terry’s inspiration). Terry had also read an article that afternoon in the magazine Runner’s World about a one-legged runner. Terry was doing it again. He was cheering us up, infecting us with his contagious positive attitude!
We left the hospital that evening with mixed emotions. I remember every bump in the road as we drove home. Surreal. One moment my eyes were filled with tears; the next, I was smiling in wonderment and disbelief. Here was the finest person and athlete I had ever met, struck down in his prime. “This sucks!” I thought. “It is so unfair!”
On the drive home and through the sleepless night, Terry never left my thoughts. He amazed me again and again.
Terry entered cancer treatment right away. Throughout the time he spent healing from losing his leg, including his enduring painful and debilitating chemotherapy, he remained positive and continued to inspire everyone around him. Then, in the midst of it all, he got a tutor so he could catch up on his studies and write the finals for his first year at college. Every day, the news about Terry that reached us left us stunned and amazed.
Sure he had bad days—but they were mostly brought on by people who felt sorry for him.
Soon Terry was out of the hospital, and he got fitted for a prosthetic leg. As he got stronger, he learned how to walk and very quickly he started experimenting with running. !e artificial legs of the late 1970s were not meant for running so he had to develop an unusual “hop and step” style. He looked awkward, but just like Terry, he not only got the job done, but he got better and better at running.
Once again, he shocked us all by announcing one day that he was going to run across Canada and raise money for cancer research. And, once again, we thought he was crazy, but no one doubted he would do it.
After some frustrating attempts to get some corporate sponsorship, Terry and his best friend, Doug Alward, headed across the country to Newfoundland, and on a cold April 12th morning in 1980, he dipped his artificial leg into the Atlantic Ocean and started his run.
Early in Terry’s run, he attracted the very rare interested supporter. It was mostly, “You won’t believe this, but I just saw a one legged runner out on the highway!”
Seven days a week, Terry would average 42 kilometers (26 miles) per day (the equivalent of a full 26.2 marathon) in stages. That would be no small feat for a two legged, world-class runner, let alone a guy with one leg and a prosthetic that was not meant for running! Being a marathon runner myself, I know how tough it is. I cannot imagine doing it every single day!
Terry ran against all obstacles beyond his handicap along the way—passing cars that tried to run him off the road, lack of attention from the media, miserable weather, unbearable pain. Yet through it all, he kept going!
Once Terry crossed into the province of Ontario, people finally started to pay more attention. Terry became the viral darling of the country. The media woke up and started to cover him and his story in a big way. He started to receive a non-stop stream of invitations for appearances and meetings. Through it all, Terry kept up his average 42 kilometers a day and never refused an interview or appearance. I remember observing from afar on the West Coast how impossible his schedule seemed to be, but at the same time, thinking “that is so Terry.”
Terry pushed onward. As he passed the nation’s capital and then Toronto, his countrywide popularity became larger than life. He kept going. He battled through pain, blisters on his stump and on his good foot. He kept going. Just as he was past the halfway point of his Marathon of Hope (as it became known), Terry ended a run early one morning, crawled into his bed in the back of his support van, and told Doug he needed to see a doctor. He had been battling severe pain, congestion, and coughing in his chest for close to a month, and on this day, he had no energy left in his tank. The prognosis from the doctor and the hospital was that the cancer had come back and spread to his lungs.
Terry’s run was over. He had run 3,339 miles in 143 days. In true Terry Fox fashion, he made a tearful apology to everyone who had supported him and to the nation. He vowed that he would not give up the fight so he could return one day and finish the journey. It was a speech that ripped my heart out and the hearts of everyone watching.
Terry came home and began treatment again. It soon became evident that the treatment was not working. Terry became weaker and sicker.
The last time I saw Terry was two months before his death in April, 1981. A group of friends and I were together one night at a local watering hole enjoying a Friday night beer. Terry walked into the bar, and as if by some divine presence, the entire place went silent. Terry came over to our table, sat down, and ordered a beer. We were stunned. He had shriveled away to half of his former size. The cancer ravaging his body was clearly winning. In true Terry Fox fashion, he started talking about life and what it meant to have lived the life he had. Soon we were all telling jokes and laughing. Right to the end, Terry’s attitude was unshakeable. It was truly worth catching!
Terry’s original vision for his Marathon of Hope was to raise the equivalent of one dollar from every Canadian to enable cancer research for a cure (about $23 million). Today, there are Terry Fox runs annually in 60 countries around the world. To date, the legacy of Terry Fox has raised over $550 million. Cancer research and cures have moved leaps and bounds ahead of where they were in 1980. The lung cancer that took Terry is treatable today because of the research his foundation has funded.
For me, I like to think of my attitude as unshakable. The lessons I acquired from Terry in the eight short years I knew him have served me beyond anything else I have ever learned. My positive, can-do attitude that I have fashioned after Terry’s has enabled me to take on some of the toughest leadership challenges. I have learned to lead with vision, purpose, and optimism—to enable those around me to see solutions and opportunity instead of problems and hopelessness. On really tough days, when it is dark and cold outside, and I am tired and just want to hit the “snooze alarm” five times, I think of Terry and I start to move. My feet hit the floor, and one step after another, I get back in the game. I hold my head up high and remember that I am a leader and people around me depend on me to do the right thing and be there for them.
Discover what gets you out of bed in the morning and get out there and be the world’s best at what you do. If you need motivation, just Google “Terry Fox” and see for yourself what I was incredibly blessed to experience! The cool part is that you can choose your attitude. You can choose to make your attitude unshakable and contagious!
What gets you out of bed in the morning?
What gets you excited about what you do and keeps you doing it?
How are you going to ensure that you live a life by your design?
What makes you optimistic about the future?
I hope that this story has inspired you as much as Terry Fox himself had inspired me. I also hope that you can reflect on the questions above and really make choices and decision to change your attitude to one of positivity and strength.
Begin to unlock the leader that you have inside of you.
Robert Murray is a Vancouver, BC based Business Strategy Consultant, #1 Best Selling Author, and International Keynote Speaker. For further advice, insight and inspiration on how to unlock your inner leader, follow Robert on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
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Tags: It's Already Inside, Leadership, Robert Murray, Robert S. Murray, Unlocked
