Throughout history we find legacies of people who were unique and courageous. Faced with overwhelming odds, there is always fear in man. There is fear of failure, fear of pain, and perhaps the greatest fear, the unknown. Some people have things happen in their lives that are so powerful, so astonishing and so profound, that they know that everything has changed. They will never be who they were before again.
The following stories are examples of such experiences that exemplify great courage. These young people confronted their fears and overcame enormous obstacles to reach great achievements. In their stories, they demonstrate that courage is the part of man that succeeds in the face of danger and that greatness may be measured by how one faces adversity.
Their stories provide living examples of courage, strength, faith, and greatness. They all give credit to parents who instilled in them strong beliefs in their ability to achieve, self esteem, and self confidence. They dared to be different and often performed outside the expectations of others. They had heroes that were supportive in their past and present lives. They exhibited initiative and determination and their actions made a difference. They are passionate about giving to others and about issues that they will carry forward into their future lives.
Karah Nazor is a post-doctoral scientist at the University of California at San Francisco working as a researcher in the quest to cure Prion’s Disease. On July 13, 2008, she became the nine-hundred forty-third solo swimmer from the United States and the first Tennessean to swim the English Channel.
Always an athlete, Karah played soccer and took ballet lessons. “My parents made sure that I was always involved in sports. I was a competitive swimmer since age 7 in the Chattanooga Area Swim League. Our meets were very competitive and we did longer races than they do now,” Karen says. “I had heroes during those years like Janet Evans, who was an Olympian swimmer. Coach John Woods at GPS took us to a North Carolina swim meet where we met the entire Olympic team and that was very inspiring.”
After graduating from Girls Preparatory School in 1995, Karah attended the University of Miami for a year, and then transferred to James Madison University in Virginia to finish four years of college swimming. Because of her interests in aging, gerontology and Alzheimer’s disease, she pursued a doctorate in that area at the University of Kentucky where she joined a Prion lab. Prion’s is a brain disease that is similar to Alzheimer’s except that death occurs quickly after the onset.
Karah had dreamed of swimming the 21-mile stretch from Dover, England to Calais, France since she was 21 years old. “I knew that the Channel was the most challenging event in swimming and I liked the idea of pushing myself to swim for many hours on end,” says Karah. “But at that time and at that age, I had no idea what swimming the Channel really meant.”
“When I moved to San Francisco, I became involved with the big open water swimming community and the South End Rowing Club,” she says. “They sponsor a lot of races, such as swims from Alcatraz or across the Golden Gate, and train people to swim the English Channel. Many people move to San Francisco to train for swimming the Channel as the conditions in San Francisco Bay are very similar.”
“You have to go through one of the two governing bodies for English Channel swimming,” she says. “They make sure that you are doing it safely. Probably the biggest challenge was the water temperature. I swim year round in the San Francisco Bay without a wetsuit. It can get down to 47 degrees and the warmest is 60 degrees. I had to train in cold water to allow my body to acclimate to it for long periods.”
Karah wanted to do her swim for a very special purpose, so she made the beneficiary of her event the Wounded Warrior Project, which helps severely wounded veterans regain as much of their faculties as possible as they recover. She was inspired by the story of Jeremy Feldbusch, a veteran injured in Iraq. A piece of shrapnel sliced through Sergeant Jeremy Feldbusch’s eye and shattered in his brain, leaving him with a frontal lobe injury and permanently blind. “Jeremy is my age. I saw a documentary about him. He is now able to go skiing and hunting, so I really related to that and chose the Wounded Warrior Project to benefit from my swim.”
Karah’s passions are swimming and gerontology (the study of aging) and her continuing work with the Wounded Warriors Project. “I have been doing research for eight years, and I’m thinking of teaching in the future,” she comments.
Jordan Thomas is a McCallie School graduate and is now a sophomore at the College of Charleston, South Carolina. On August 16, 2005, Jordan lost both his legs when he was struck by the propeller of the boat he was swimming near while scuba diving with his family in the Florida Keys.
“A big wave caught me and pushed me behind the boat,” he says. “I knew what had happened immediately. I looked at my father, who jumped in to help me, and told him that my feet were gone. I am a firm believer that things happen for a reason and we had a lot of things working for us. My parents are responsible for me being alive today as they obviously saved my life.”
Since his recovery, he has formed the Jordan Thomas Foundation, which is dedicated to assisting children with traumatic injuries who are unable to afford the medical care and prosthetic devices needed for full rehabilitation and recovery.
There were many obstacles for Jordan to overcome during his recovery, but his attitude was unfailingly positive. “All my life I have been determined and a hard worker. I never doubted that I had the ability to get back to where I had been before the accident,” he explains. “I had a lot of people tell me that my life would never be the same, that I would never hit another golf ball again. It took a lot of hard work, but I had a lot of motivation. I had physical therapy for five months learning how to walk again, to play golf and bowl.”
Jordan attributes his positive outlook and motivation to his parents and to his faith. “They instilled a lot of values in me when I was young, such as a good work ethic and the belief that you can do whatever you want to do.” After his injury, Jordan told his parents that he wanted to go skiing the next winter. “So we went skiing in March,” he notes. “The first day I walked into the special needs area and decided I really did not need any help. I took my skis and headed down the mountain like everyone else.” Jordan believes he is a better golfer now than he was before his accident.
“I am blessed with a wonderful family and friends and I am passionate about my faith, my family, sports, the foundation, and many things,” he says. “I started the foundation because I believe that every kid should have the basic necessities to fully recover. I saw many kids whose insurance would not pay for that. We have had three beneficiaries; the first family had six children and in order to afford their daughter’s care, they had to sell their house and move in with another family. Parents make many sacrifices for their children. It is very rewarding to know that the foundation can help them. No matter what I do, I know that the foundation will always be a part of my life,”
he says.
Katherine Becksvoort is a graduate of Red Bank High School. She is one of few persons to have hiked both the Appalachian Trail and the 2,700-mile Pacific Crest Trail by herself and she wants to tackle the Continental Divide (the ultimate trail experience) at some point in her life. She is a passionate advocate for the environment and for women to pursue their dreams.
Born in Geneva, Switzerland, Katherine and her family moved to the United States when she was five years old and to Chattanooga when she was seven. She went to elementary school on Signal Mountain and to Red Bank for middle and high school. After high school, she wanted to take a year off before starting college. Her parents wanted her to do something meaningful with her time during that year, so she traveled across the southern part of Africa. This experience opened a whole new world to her that she believes could never have been achieved in a year of college.
“My family has always raised us to follow our dreams,” Katherine comments. “My brother, my sister and I are all successful in our own ways and I believe that happened because they encouraged us to be different. At a time when most women are retiring, my mother opened the English Tea Room with no business experience in her late fifties and built it from the ground up. I am very proud of her.”
Katherine says that when on the trails, hiking becomes the “job” and the “vacation” is going into town and being in contact with others. “When you are hiking for six months, you don’t hear news, so you crave to hear news, to call home, or to buy that milkshake you have craved for so long,” she says.
“I found that few women were hiking the trails and that most of them were in couples,” she says. “I enjoyed being alone because it gave me more freedom and independence. I saw people of all ages and all walks of life. There are many people hiking the trails under much more difficult circumstances than mine. I would like to do the Appalachian Trail when I am 65.”
For the past five years, Katherine has worked with an organization called Adventure Tracks, taking youth, ages 13 to 18, into the backcountry for 13 to 30-day wilderness courses. “I am very passionate about people being aware of the environment around them. Local and global environmental policy is high on the agenda right now and everything that we do affects the entire world.”
“I am also passionate about people getting to know others without being judgmental,” she says. “I have found on my journeys that people are so willing to share themselves with you and people are generally good if given a chance. It is important not to judge people by what they wear or do for a living. You can learn from and receive joy from everyone that you meet. I have had many good conversations with young girls, and I believe that many of my values come through in these conversations.”
“I received an email from one of my students three years after her course to say that she had just hiked the John Muir Trail in California,” she says. “To have her say ‘thank you so much for inspiring that in me’ is one of the greatest gifts I could ever receive. It is very rewarding and exciting to know that my students have the self confidence to plan and work through a large goal and feel good about that accomplishment.”
Trent Creswell was struck by a car while riding his bicycle in the summer of 2008. His injuries were severe, requiring multiple surgeries and months of rehabilitation. “I was bicycling on the sidewalk and the car came up on the sidewalk and hit me,” Trent recalls. “I don’t remember any of it, thankfully. I was in a coma for three weeks. Both of my legs and one of my arms were broken and I had to have complete facial reconstructive surgery.”
Trent’s face was virtually peeled away in the accident. “I woke up at Erlanger and was shocked by the news,” he says. “I spent my 18th birthday at Siskin. That was probably two of the best weeks of my life. I learned more about myself there than I ever knew. The physical therapy was really grueling and I went through a lot of doubts as to whether or not I would regain all the function in my legs and arm.”
Following his accident, Trent began to chronicle his experience by making notes to himself. “I do not remember what happened, so it was like chronicling the crazy stuff that I had been doing and trying to make sense of things,” he notes. “It is hard to deal with something this big when you do not remember what happened. I was trying to rationalize how I felt and how people were treating me. For a long time, people were treating me like I was brain damaged.”
Trent’s musical theatre teacher encouraged Trent to write about his experience. When he returned to school at the Chattanooga High School Center for the Creative Arts (CCA), he wrote about the accident and its impact on his life . He then submitted it to the National Foundation for the Advancement of Arts (NFAA) Young Artists Competition, the largest national arts talent search for high school seniors.
Soon after submitting his writing, Trent was notified that he had been chosen to be among 150 finalists from 8,000 entries spanning six disciplines including music, film, theatre, visual arts, dance and writing. He was selected with just 20 others as a writing finalist. Trent says, “I was trying to reassemble my life. My musical theater teacher told me that he thought I could win the competition, so I submitted it.”
When reflecting on his experience Trent notes, “The biggest thing has been the spiritual and emotional grieving that I have had to do,” he says. “ It is hard to live your whole life with your face looking one way and one day you wake up and it is different. It made me think about how much emphasis people put on the way you look and how little that matters. It has been good for me to realize what makes someone beautiful. It has nothing to do with cosmetics but is what is inside the person. I have looked at what is necessary in life and my need for material things has changed. Until you have to rebuild your life, you do not realize that everything has been created. It has made me aware of how grateful we should be, even in the worst circumstances. It has been a very maturing experience and I feel I have become an adult through this process.”