At some point this week, George Martin will take a walk in Virginia.
He’ll walk upon the curvy macadam roads, take in the skyline of trees that will soon begin to change colors. His walk will be brisk. His strides will be paced. Martin will need to conserve his energy. That makes sense, considering that his walk began in New York City and will end at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.
Health conscious: Five days after the sixth anniversary of 9/11, George Martin began walking across the U.S. to raise money for World Trade Center responders.
|
Martin isn’t just walking in Virginia. He’s walking through it.
Martin’s taking “A Journey for 9/11.” It began five days after the sixth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.
”Our mission is to help provide health care for the surviving rescue and recovery workers who rushed to Ground Zero after the 9/11 attacks, by raising a minimum of $10 Million,” says Martin on his website ajourneyfor911.net.
The former New York Giants captain made his name known to millions by wreaking havoc in NFC backfields for nearly a decade and half. His hope is to create awareness in millions more by walking through their backyards with the knees that sustained 14 years of abuse in the NFL. His quest will take him through 16 states and 2,900 plus miles.
Many of those who rushed to the scene after the 9/11 attacks were left with more then just a mental nightmare. According to a Mount Sinai Hospital (New York) study released in September 2006, almost 70 percent of World Trade Center responders had a new or worsened respiratory symptom that developed during or after their time working at the WTC; among the responders who were asymptomatic before 9/11, 61 percent developed respiratory symptoms while working at the WTC; close to 60 percent still had a new or worsened respiratory symptom at the time of their examination.
Martin’s goal is to give those heroes a better quality of life.
In another region of New York, there’s another story of walking. Another one about quality of life. Another one about hope.
Two weeks ago, two days after Buffalo Bills reserve tight end Kevin Everett crashed to the ground, paralyzed from an attempted tackle of Denver Broncos Domenik Hixon, doctors said his chances of a full recovery were “bleak and dismal.”
The next day Dr. Kevin Gibbons, the supervisor of neurosurgery at Buffalo’s Millard Fillmore Gates Hospital, announced Everett could wiggle his toes, bend his hip, move his ankles, and kick his leg as well as extend his elbow and give a flex to his biceps.
Here’s the Buffalo Bills’ Kevin Everett before an attempted tackle left him paralyzed a few weeks ago. Now he just hopes to walk again.
|
Doctors, while maintaining cautious optimism, believe Everett will walk again.
Incredible—isn’t it?—the things we take for granted in life, such as using our finger tips to type an e-mail or walking to the refrigerator.
Mitchell and Everett, in different ways, were quickly reminded of life’s simple pleasures. Different as they may be, they will both struggle in their journeys. There will be moments in which they’ll feel they’ve hit the point of breaking down, and points at which which they will contemplate quitting.
Yet they won’t. One man will walk to stand for something. The other will stand just to walk again.
In the end, the goal is the same. Both men will walk with and for a purpose.
Wes McElroy hosts “The Final Round” on ESPN AM840. Monday-Friday, 4pm-6pm.