NMS Students Learn About ‘Nametags’

By Eliza Hallabeck

Newtown Middle School students were asked on Monday, September 26 to repeat two phrases: “It’s not what happens to you” and “It’s what you do with what happens to you.”

Those lines were also projected onto a screen in the NMS auditorium with presenter and Paralympic athlete Chris Waddell on the stage.

Mr Waddell, who is the subject of a documentary titled One Revolution about his scaling of Mount Kilimanjaro, also spoke at Reed Intermediate School on Tuesday, September 27, and the documentary was shown to the public at Newtown High School on Wednesday, September 28.

The presentations and the public screening of One Revolution were sponsored by the NMS and Reed PTA Cultural Arts Committees.

Nametags, the educational program of Mr Waddel’s foundation, also called One Revolution, refers to the labels people give themselves and others, and they change throughout life, Mr Waddell said. He said his personal nametags went from “student” to “ski racer” to “cool.”

Then, almost 23 years ago, a ski accident left Mr Waddell with damaged vertebrae.

“After that one moment, my nametags change a little bit,” said Mr Waddell. “I broke my back. I was paraplegic.”

Mr Waddell explained the accident made his nametags change from “a para” to “student” and he feared it meant he was “uncool.”

“Everybody feels that everybody else has it easier than we do,” said Mr Waddell, later explaining that adversity sometimes helps to shape who a person can become.

After the accident, Mr Waddell said he could not get out of bed on his own, he could not get dressed on his own, and, “I couldn’t do very much for myself.”

But, Mr Waddell said, he would not let the struggles he was facing be part of his life. He let the small insecurities of everyday life go, and said he had never been more powerful.

“It wasn’t about what I loved to do,” said Mr Waddell. “It was about what I could do well.”

Mr Waddell also reflected on a chance meeting with a little girl two years ago. He was retrieving his mail after a long trip away from home, and the little girl rode up on a pink bike. After she asked, Mr Waddell explained his accident and that he would never walk again. As the little girl rode away she said, “That is too bad.”

Now, two years later, Mr Waddell told the students he still wishes he had stopped her.

“That little girl, she saw the tragedy, but she didn’t see the potential gift,” Mr Waddell said.

As a result of his accident, Mr Waddell said he became the best monoskier in the world, met presidents and the Dalai Lama.

According to a release for the screening, Mr Waddell is the most decorated male skier in Paralympic history and one of a select few who has medaled in both the summer and winter games. In the fall of 2009, Waddell became the first paraplegic to summit Mount Kilimanjaro almost entirely unassisted, and in 2010 he was inducted into both the Paralympic Hall of Fame and the United States Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame.

On Monday, Mr Waddell showed photos from his climb and explained to the students that his search for an identity led him to Mount Kilimanjaro. Before attempting to summit the mountain, Mr Waddell had anticipated being completely unassisted by another person, but at one point during the climb he and his crew came to a field of boulders, impassable by his custom-built bike that used arm strength to propel him forward.

Mr Waddell said he felt he had failed the 1.1 billion people in the world with a disability when his crew had to carry him up the roughly 100 feet of the boulder field.

Later during the trip, Mr Waddell pulled his guide aside and told him he had let him down, but his guide said, “No one climbs a mountain alone.”

When Mr Waddell and his crew made it to the summit the next day, he told the students he realized he needed people more than he had known. He needed people to spread his story.

No matter how hard someone thinks they may have it, Mr Waddell told the auditorium of students, there is someone who has had a harder time and become successful in the face of adversity.

For more information on the documentary and the work of the foundation, visit www.one-revolution.com.