The path along Lake Michigan was where I pushed my wheelchair to the limit. The path spanned the Chicago waterfront from south to north, nearly 20 miles in all. Just before 33rd Street there was a hill where I would push as fast as I could until I felt a tingling in my scalp. I would need to be able to go all out, I thought. I would need the ability to push my arms this fast without stopping. I imagined being chased, or running for shelter somewhere far away. The scene was dim and vague, but I was sure there would be a time when my life would depend on being able to go that fast and far without stopping. When I felt the tingle in my scalp I knew I had made it.
This was my second marathon. The only thing worse than running a marathon once is running it twice. The second time you know exactly how painful it will be, and you know exactly how long it will take. The first time a marathon is a throw of the dice. The second time it is a slow walk through fire. The first time there was no one at the finish line to meet me, so it was good to see Martha’s face there on that cold, rainy November day, the steam from my body mixing with her breath and the gray mist blowing in from Lake Michigan.
“Don’t think about forever. How about being with me for another week?” I would say. “String enough weeks together and they make a lifetime.” Thinking back, it was hopeless, but it was just the kind of challenge that could keep someone like me interested: I felt like Sidney Poitier in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? It could work. We could be a part of history. They would make movies about us long after we were gone. Caesar and Cleopatra, Cyrano and Roxanne, John and Martha.
In the restaurants of Grand Rapids, Michigan, during the mid-70s a middle-aged woman, her paraplegic son, and the rest of her family could be seen ordering dinner. The middle-aged woman would always demand to see a menu written in braille. “What! You have no braille menu?” You could be sure to hear her loud voice. You would be sure to notice that there were no blind people in this group. When the demand was made for the braille menu, the people around the table could be seen slinking down in their seats, or holding their ordinary menus up before their faces.
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I was working in the National Public Radio newsroom when the announcement about the NASA journalist in space program first crossed the news wires. I had always wanted to be an astronaut. Long ago I had decided that I had missed the launchpad. But this program seemed like a second chance. I was a journalist. I wanted to go into space. I would apply. One of the editors suggested that only science reporters apply, and that I was not part of the science desk. I noted that there was no stipulation from NASA about science reporters. “Go ahead and apply,” she said. “We will decide who from NPR will go into space. Besides, John, I think we can agree that NASA will not be sending a paraplegic as the first journalist to go into space. Right?”
I, too, could believe it was ridiculous to suggest that a person in a wheelchair might travel into space. I, too, wondered if I was wasting the application. The tone of my editor seemed to suggest, don’t rock the boat, don’t attract attention. Today we’re doing journalists in space, John; maybe someday we’ll do disabled people in space. That could take a long time. For the last 230 years we’ve been doing the white guys in the White House program.
