Terry Fox was a regular teenager who ran cross country and played college basketball. At the age of 18, his life changed forever when he was diagnosed with bone cancer and his right leg was amputated.
The road to recovery was not an easy one and during one of those times, he decided that he will do something to help those battling for their lives due to Cancer. The night before Terry underwent his operation, his high school basketball coach brought him a running magazine that featured an article about an amputee who had run in the New York City Marathon. That night he dreamt about running across Canada and raising money for Cancer research. His simple motivation was that more money was needed for Cancer research.
To make his dream come true, Terry started training and after training for 15 months, he embarked on running east to west cross- Canada. On 12th April 1980, he began his run from the Atlantic.
Some days he was running 23 miles (42 Kms) a day. He stopped in more than 400 towns, schools and cities to talk about why he was running. He ran through snow, rain, wind, heat & humidity. He used to start 4:30 am in the morning and used to end his last mile at 7:30 in the evening and he did this for almost everyday. Somedays hundreds of people used to cheer him on the road and on the other days, he was all alone. By September 1st 1980, Terry had run a total of 143 days and a staggering 5,373 Kms, before his cancer made a devastating return. On June 28 1981, cancer took his life but not before he achieving his dream of raising 1$ from every Canadian. But more importantly, he started a revolution, The Terry fox run (or the Marathon of Hope) as it is called, has raised more than 850 Million Dollars since 1980 for Cancer research and bringing hope & health to millions of Canadians.
To honor his legacy, the annual Terry Fox Run happens every September and proceeds from that run goes to Cancer Research.
There are so many lessons in there, but for a change, let us not draw lessons from the story. Let us just be in AWE of what one person with grit, hope & determination can achieve.
To know more about him & his inspiring story, you an visit https://terryfox.org/. You can donate too.
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