Sandy, sure, but you knew you amazed Philip. And, you 2 have an
interesting way of communicating. Lol.
earlier, Sandra Scovell, wrote:
>John,
>
>I never thought of myself as any kind of a role model.
>
>Sandy
> > On Jan 15, 2015, at 10:26 AM, john schwery <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> > Awww, come on, Sandy, you already knew that. Ha!
> >
> > earlier, Sandra Scovell, wrote:
> >> I guess you learn something every day, thank you Philip.
> >>
> >> Sent from my iPhone
> >>
> >> > On Jan 14, 2015, at 11:21 PM, Phil Scovell
> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >> >
> >> > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Phil Scovell"
> <[log in to unmask]>
> >> > To: <[log in to unmask]>
> >> > Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2015 11:17 PM
> >> > Subject: [BLIND-X] There aren't many left; role models, I mean.
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > I saw men, as I grew up as a youngster in Des Moines Iowa and
> later in Omaha Nebraska, whom I admired. I often hid just out of
> site behind bookshelves as I listened to the men in our living room
> over to our house, with their families for Thanksgiving or
> Christmas, discussing the weather, farming, hunting, fishing,
> building houses, fixing automobiles, guns, and even talking about
> God and the Bible. I would lay on the floor, one ear cocked toward
> the living room and think to myself, "I hope I can do that some
> day. You see, in the early and mid 1950s, children were taught to
> only be seen and not heard when other adults were around. My Uncle
> Fred, for example, is one of my role models, a hero to me actually,
> because he was 17 years old when his father, a Kansas farmer, died
> an early death. Two months later, my dad was born without knowing
> he was fatherless. There were now 5 children in the Scovell family
> and Uncle Fred was the oldest. He rode a horse 3 miles to school
> but his horse ride totaled 10 miles one way and 10 miles
> back. Why? Uncle Fred had a seven mile trap line which he had to
> check first before going to school and once again on the way
> home. The pelts of various animals brought as much as a dollar and
> a half and the family needed every penny since Uncle Fred also was
> responsible for, not only the farm, but the raising of the
> children. He took my dad to the circus whenever it was in town,
> dad was 5 years old the first time his big brother took him to his
> first circus, and he taught my dad to hunt and fish and to farm and
> how to work. Strangely enough, my Uncle Fred taught me many of
> those same things because my father, Uncle Fred's baby brother,
> died when I was 11 years old. So I got to go hunting, fishing, and
> even went to sports shows and the like with my Uncle Fred just as
> my father had when he was young. Uncle Fred was short, nearly died
> of colon cancer when he was 65, but when he was 82 years young, he
> called me up on the phone from Wichita and said, "Is that offer
> still open, Phil?" I said, "You mean the one about you moving and
> living with me and my wife and our children in your later years?"
> He said that's what he was talking about. I said, "Come on, Uncle
> Fred, we've got the room." So he sold the small 2-bedroom house he
> built with his own hands after he retired and recovered from the
> cancer, packed up all his things in a 2-wheel trailer he also had
> built by himself, and drove to Denver and moved in with us. He
> died a couple of months before he turned 92; outliving all his
> other brothers and sisters. So we got him for nearly the last 10
> years of his life. I was in my early thirties by this time but
> Uncle Fred did all the yard work by choice, spent his days in our
> double car garage building things, putting up fencing around our
> property, and having my three young children running in and out of
> his 2-bedroom full sized apartment we had for him. I felt
> uncomfortable at first, Uncle Fred living in the basement, walking
> up and down the stairs many times a day at his age, and finally
> asked him how he liked living in the remodeled basement as he sat
> eating and taking his lunch and supper meals with me and my
> family. He said, and I can hear his voice now, "Why, Phil, that
> place is the nicest place I have ever lived." I told him I was
> sorry he had to go up and down the stairs all the time, and he
> said, "Why, think nothing of it. I don't mind atall. It's no
> bother so don't you go to worrying about that." Even in my
> thirties, I learned more about home upkeep, repair fencing,
> building gates, making bookshelves, and working with my hands than
> I did the few short years I had with my own dad. In Fact, since I
> am a ham operator, I put up my first tower with my Uncle doing all
> the ground work and even showing me better ways of how to do the
> tower installation since he built bridges in his youth for the
> county. I said all of this just to say, Uncle Fred was one of my
> role models. Now, shifting gears, I've had other adult men role
> models such as my dad, who was like God to me when I was little,
> and other men in their late seventies and early eighties that were
> the kindest, and most Godly, men I ever knew before my
> blindness. Over the years, 50 plus years now, of my blindness,
> role models seemed harder to find but find some I did and I'm
> thankful for what I learned just listening to them talk about their
> lives, jobs they had, and places they had been. Making one more
> step now, I'm to the purpose of this message. Over this past
> Christmas holiday, I was listening to lots of college and
> professional football games on the radio. One Saturday afternoon,
> between back to back games, ESPN, the sports network, played a
> story about a reporter who was doing a short biography of a young
> teenage girl. I think the series is called Sport Life. She began
> losing her sight as a very young child and by her teens, she had to
> get a guide dog because she simply had light perception
> remaining. She still ran track and field events and won more times
> than not. This intrigued me because just before I went blind from
> detached retinas, I was into track and field. Even at the school
> for the blind, I not only joined the wrestling team right away at
> age 12, but I participated in all types of track and field events
> we had at the school. One year, we had a full track and field
> competition with running events, standing high jumping, throwing
> events, and too many other events to mention in one post. I did
> not know it was competition but rather just thought it was
> something we did in gym class the last month of school since the
> wrestling season was over. We had a full school meeting in the
> auditorium of the school a couple of days before summer vacation
> began and various awards and citations were handed out. This was
> for music, drama, academics, and many other things that all the
> teachers voted on. I still had no idea what was going to happen
> next. My name was called. I flushed. The coach was handing out
> awards. He said, "Phil, that's you. Please come up to the
> front." I did so, not knowing what he was going to say or do. He
> gave me a certificate for winning the highest score in track and
> field events for that year. I hadn't even gone to the state
> wrestling tournament and here they were giving me an athletic award
> for being number one on the field. I was shocked because I would
> have tried harder if I had known it was a competition in the first
> place. Yet, what I am talking about has nothing to do with me
> personally but it is related to my track and field interests and
> the blind girl who was into track and field after losing her site
> which they were interviewing on this sports program. What really
> caught my attention was she competed in a state competition in
> Texas in her teens as a pole vaulter. Strangely enough, before I
> lost my sight, I saw a pole vaulting track and field competition on
> TV and these guys were pole vaulting 14 and 15 feet into the
> air. I wanted to try it right away. In case you are reading this
> and don't know what pole vaulting is, you stand about 80 feet away
> from two poles, which are vertical, placed several feet apart, ,
> and on top, or near the top, his a place with two hooks upon which
> a horizontal bar is placed precariously. You use a fiberglass pole
> which is 12 or 13 feet long, depending upon how high you plan to
> jump, with a grip on the end you hold and you run for the center of
> the top vertical poles. The purpose is to jam your pole into a
> block set in the ground that will stop forward movement of your
> fiberglass pole and will then hoist your entire body mass into the
> air and up and over the top bar without tipping it off the hooks,
> or racks, holding the horizontal bar barely in place. Yes, your
> fiberglass pole, as it hits the stationary block, bens almost in
> half as you swing your feet and body completely off the ground into
> the air to levels from 10 feet and higher for high school events,
> 12 feet and higher for college, and even 20 feet records have been
> won, and broken, for clearing the bar in Olympic games. Remember,
> you cannot knock the horizontal bar off its perch and however high
> you go into the air,, is how far you fall back to the sandy ground
> at the base of the pole vaulting structure. What might that feel
> like; the landing, I mean? Well, when I was 9 and 10 years old, we
> went to a public swimming pool several times each summer and
> especially on hot days. It had a three level diving tower over the
> 12 foot deep end of this huge, double sized, Olympic pool. You
> took stair steps up to either the 17 foot level, the 27 foot level,
> or the highest level, which was 33 feet above the water. I jumped
> all the time, or dove, from the 17 foot level but when I turned 10
> years of age, I thought I'd try the 27 foot level. The lowest
> level was great; no problem. Going 10 feet higher and diving from
> the 27 foot platform turned out to be nothing like I imagined. I
> dove, head first , my arms outstretched in front of me, and hit the
> water. I heard myself grown audibly, underwater, at how hard the
> water was to my body. It was like falling 10 feet out of a tree
> and hitting the ground. It slammed my whole body so hard, I was
> never going to try that again but I did and it was just as
> hard. Now try and imagine Olympic high divers jumping and doing
> roles and flips all the way down from well over 100 feet and
> landing in the water feet first. I'm sorry; I cannot imagine what
> that must feel like. I didn't even flip; I just did a simple head
> first dive off the 27 foot tower level. Now go back and think
> about being blind and falling to the ground from 12 feet, or a
> sighted pole vaulter in the Olympics falling from just over 20
> feet? Wow! Think of this, too. Points are taken off, or added,
> for style, time, the way you use your pole in twisting yourself up
> and over the bar, and even how you fall and land on the
> ground. Yep, when I could see, I wanted to do it. After going
> blind, I forgot about it. Last Christmas, just a few weeks ago,
> this girl I mention, her name is Charlotte Brown, if I heard it
> right, has set local Texas records of just over 12 feet and took
> fourth place in a track and field pole vaulting event. When that
> program was over, I turned down the radio and sat and thought about
> this young lady. Her guy dog stood with her at the starting line
> and I believe ran free along side her as she ran the 80 feet down
> the lane to the stopping ground box, which you have to hit
> perfectly, where her tip of her pole jams into where they had her
> coach yelling her name and an electronic beeper guiding her
> directly to the short stationary box on the ground. I'm getting
> goose bumps right now just retelling the story as I did when I was
> listening to this young lady's life. When it was over, I said out
> loud, "Thank God. There's at least one role model for me as a blind
> person." Now, don't get me wrong. I've met many blind men,
> especially when I was in my twenties, whom I not only admired but
> they encourage me to press onward and upward and their influence on
> my blindness as a young man, made a big difference. In fact, they
> made all the difference in the world to me. I'm saying, they were
> my role models, too, just like men I saw as a sighted kid at the
> age of ten. In fact, over these many years, I have some blind
> women I consider role models to me and my wife is one of them. She
> impressed me so much when we met, I was 18 and she was 20, I
> married her two years later and have been married to her now for 43
> years as of this month of January. Don't tell her this but she
> still amazes me to this day. Anyhow, for any of you out there,
> regardless of your age, there are role models to emulate and I
> encourage you to keep looking for role models wherever you go.
> >> >
> >> > Phil.
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