A few months before I passed my Novice exam, I was listening to some 
guys around Mississippi on 75 meters. As they began telling each other 
what they had been doing that day, one of them said: "Well, I spent 
the day sitting on the floor with my wheel chair torn apart putting a 
new set of wheel bearings in it. Then he added, "That's the third set 
this year!"

Someone asked what was happening to them, and he said: "It's like I 
told the folks at the factory. Just because I can't walk doesn't mean 
I don't enjoy planting my garden and playing in the dirt.

Of course this drew a good laugh from the others in the QSO. After 
things settled down a bit, a relatively new ham said to him, "I didn't 
know you were in a wheel chair."

My soon to be friend then told the new comer that he had arthritis, 
and had been in a wheel chair for 20 years. What he said next has 
stayed with me ever since.

"I won't knowingly run over anybody with it, but I don't back down 
from talking about it when it needs to come up in natural conversation 
such as when John asked what I had been doing today."

I was fourteen years old when I heard that conversation. Within a 
year, I had met this gentleman, both on the air and in person.

About 14 years later, while talking with him at a hamfest, that story 
flashed through my mind. I had never mentioned it to him before, but 
that day I told him how his statement had made a big impression on me.

His wife was with him, and they both thanked me for telling him.

I will never know why I chose that day to tell him that story, but I 
will always be thankful I did. I didn't know it then, of course, but 
that was the last time I would ever talk with him.

About two months later, my friend R. B., WA5OHQ, died from a blood 
clot following surgery.

He is still a legend among those of us who were blessed to know him.


Mike Duke, K5XU
American Council of Blind Radio Amateurs