by peteblack4ua@gmail.com | Sep 7, 2017 | Chasing Your Dream, Overcoming Adversity, Persistence
Twenty-two-year-old Harvard University student Norman Vaughan was trying to make the freshman football team when he read the headlines in a Boston newspaper, “Byrd to the South Pole.” Thoughts of the expedition consumed him and he told his four roommates, “I’ve got to...
by peteblack4ua@gmail.com | Sep 5, 2017 | Never Give Up, Overcoming Adversity, Refusing to Quit
As a kid Andy Andrews loved playing backyard football with his buddies and watching the game on television with his father. After several of his sixth grade classmates decided to go out for the school’s football team at Heard Elementary School in Dothan, Alabama, he...
by peteblack4ua@gmail.com | Aug 30, 2017 | Adversity, Determination Despite the Odds, Overcoming Adversity
Sitting in her dorm room at Auburn University – Montgomery (AUM), Allison Wetherbee was depressed. She recalled, “My life was fertile ground for pessimism…I indulged in whining from time to time, sometimes for a week at a time.” She often bartered with God,...
by peteblack4ua@gmail.com | Aug 29, 2017 | Determination Despite the Odds, Iron-willed, Overcoming Adversity
When Diana Nyad was five years old, her father, who was of Greek descent, pointed to her name in the dictionary – Diana, a Greek goddess, and said to her, “Some day you will be a famous swimmer like Diana.” By the time Nyad discovered that her Greek namesake had...
by peteblack4ua@gmail.com | Aug 17, 2017 | Adversity, Beating the Odds, Overcoming Adversity
In October 1988, science fiction writer Thomas Disch was working as a contractor for Walt Disney Studios. While eating lunch one day, he envisioned the original idea for the movie The Lion King. He began writing the script, which he titled King of the Kalahari, and a...
