From the Stop Feeling Sorry for Yourself Department, I offer you this: A new Orvis film about a remarkable woman who had polio as a child and now goes fly fishing … with her feet.
Mary Loudder is pretty pragmatic about her disability. She’s lived a lifetime with paralysis in her arms thanks to the horrible disease that has been all but eradicated thanks to vaccines and modern medicine. But Mary lives with the ravages of the illness every day, and I’m amazed at her upbeat attitude. Those around her have come to know Mary for the things she can do, not for the things she can’t. “I don’t really see her as handicapped,” quipped her son, Brent. “There was never anything she said she couldn’t do.”
So the next time your cast goes a little haywire, or you miss that big fish because you’re hook-set was just a bit late, remember Mary Loudder.
“If you persist in anything,” Mary says, “you’ll eventually be able to do it well enough that it gives you great pleasure.”
Amen.
— Chris Hunt