This is Motivational Speaker Charlie Adams. When delivering Stoke the Fire Within or How to Build a Positive Attitude and KEEP the Darn Thing, I often play a 3 minute video feature that I once did on the treasure known as Brett Eastburn. For years I was a Positive News Reporter for WSBT Television and one of the features I did was on Brett when he spoke to Middle School kids back in the late 1990’s. I was blown away by his message to them.
I became friends with Brett, went to his Wedding where he married Chrisa, and have often talked about him in Motivational Talks literally around the world.
In August, I delivered the opening motivational keynote at an Anti Money Laundering Conference in Antigua. The audience was international to say the least, with people there from London, Jamaica, Ireland, Cayman and all over. A bit concerned they would connect with the message, I loaded up heavily on ‘Brett stories.’ They laughed, connected, and appreciated that part of the keynote.
Every audience does, because Brett is …. a treasure. I have never met anyone more positive or with more resolve.
His highly anticipated book came out recently. I was just about first in line. I took the photo of Brett signing books with his mouth and stubs. Over 200 books were sold on the first day alone as people came from all over his home area of northern Indiana. The initial printing has sold out, and more are being printed.
I read a chapter in the car in the parking lot, and by Tuesday night had devoured it. I am now underlining parts.
This book will inspire you, help you, and entertain you. If you know of folks that could use some ‘ooomph’ in their life, you might want to get a copy in their hands.
Corby Books, publisher of Stoke the Fire Within, has done a fine job laying out Brett’s book. Ken Bradford, who edited at the South Bend Tribune for many years, helped Brett with the editing. Fellow Edgerton’s Group Travel host Bill Moor wrote the Foreward.
As a special treat to you, I have part of Chapter One, which includes what Brett stands for, and the amazing story of his birth. Can you imagine a baby being born with no arms and no legs?
This Newsletter is the kind to enjoy when you have some time. Get a cup of coffee or tea, and enjoy the chapter and the rest of the Newsletter. I hope you support the book. This is a story people need to know…
Charlie Adams
Speaker/Writer and Edgerton’s Group Travel Host
“By the dictionary’s definition, a handicap is not a person. It’s a thing. More accurately, a handicap is something that will slow you down, get in your way or stop you completely. So, in my opinion, based on that definition, I’m not handicapped. Over the years, I’ve found only a few things that I can’t do well. I’ve played basketball, football and baseball. I’m an accomplished swimmer. I was ranked fourth in the nation in my weight class in wrestling, I have studied martial arts and I can hold my own in pool.
I eat with a knife, fork, spoon or weapon of my choice. I have been driving legally since I was eighteen. Sometimes I do things in slightly unconventional ways. But overall, things don’t slow me down, get in my way or stop me completely.
My stubs? No, I didn’t really chew off my nails, my hands or my feet. And no, I didn’t lose my arms and legs in an accident. They weren’t blown off in a war. I was born this way. And it may surprise you that
I thank God every day for making me the way I am. I am different enough that people notice me wherever I go. Sometimes I might scare them or make them squeamish. They might stare at me, or they may try to ignore me. But always, I make an impression on them. And I know, somewhere in their minds, they’re wondering, what on earth happened to that guy?
My theme is “No Arms, No Legs, No Handicaps.”
I was born in 1971 in a hospital in South Bend, Indiana. As you might expect, my entrance into this world was a bit unusual. Like a lot of young married couples, my mom Barb and dad Vaughn wanted children. So they were thrilled when Mom got pregnant the first time. They were sad when the baby was miscarried, but Mom was pregnant again soon.
This second child, Shawn, she carried to the eighth month, but he died shortly after birth. Dad was in the military in Hawaii at the time, so
Shawn is buried in a military cemetery in Springfield, Illinois. I’ve been to see Shawn’s grave once. It’s in a big field with row after row of white headstones. There are four empty plots available there where my mom, my dad, my sister and I can be buried, if we so choose. I
doubt we will use them because it is too far for friends and family to visit.
Also, it gives me the heebie-jeebies to look at a section of ground that is waiting for me.
Obviously, when it was my turn to be born, something wasn’t quite right. We haven’t gone and put forth the effort of having DNA tests or anything like that. So we really aren’t sure medically how I
ended up the way I did.
My mother didn’t take Thalidomide or anything like that. The drug, prescribed by doctors in the late 1950s for nausea, a painkiller and sedative, was blamed for widespread birth defects, mainly in Germany. Some of the people older than me with deformed arms and legs have been called Thalidomide babies. These likely wouldn’t be Americans, because the drug was never approved for use here.
Nowadays, doctors routinely perform ultrasounds on pregnant women. They can check the baby’s gender, monitor the heartbeat and even count the fingers and toes.
Well, I was born in an earlier time. And if doctors had seen me as I am on their ultrasound monitors, what could they have done anyway?
Mom was suffering from hay fever during her pregnancy. Maybe that had something to do with it.
There’s another theory we’ve done some checking into. There was a child born in Kentucky 30 years after me who has the exact same dimensions as me-a right arm that ends at the elbow, a left arm less than half that size and her legs are the same way as mine. When we visited her, we spoke with her parents in detail, trying to figure out if there was anything that would link the two of us together.
The best connection we could come up with was that her parents and my parents both raised horses and chickens. Both families used a certain chemical to rub on their horses’ skin. And chickens carry something called Newcastle B Virus, which causes chicks to be
born without limbs.
These are just theories and have not been prove But maybe that’s it.
It probably makes no difference at this point. The most important thing that came out of that meeting in Kentucky was that the girl’s parents saw how we I have tackled the challenges in front of me. If the
had any misgivings about having this child, our visit changed their minds.
But getting back to the day of my birth, my parents were a bit more nervous than most would be. They already had lost two babies-one through miscarriage and another as a still-birth-and here I was being born two months prematurely. After Mom’s first contraction, she kept asking to be put under sedation for this delivery. The nurses said it would not be possible due to the dangers to her and
the baby. After her second contraction, they placed a mask over her mouth and she sighed with relief and shouted, “Yes.” She didn’t know it, but she wasn’t feeling better because of a sedative. It turns out they were feeding her straight oxygen. The third contraction soon came
and out popped little me.
Seconds after I was born, I was whisked out of the room. Mom had her eyes shut tight because of her fear of blood and guts. Still, Mom was scared. With her eyes tightly shut, she had asked a nurse, “What did I have?” And was told, “I didn’t look at that.” It was the same response
she had received when Shawn was born. Another nurse came back in, and Mom asked, “Is the baby alright?” The nurse broke down and started sobbing. This made Mom think that I was dead. Person after person kept coming into the room to look at her and observe any emotional changes, and still no one would give her relief to the question, “Is the baby OK?”
The word soon spread through the hospital that Mom had a baby with no arms and legs. All sorts of people were staring at her through the windows. She felt like she was in a science-fiction movie, but she still didn’t know why. At the same time these doctors and nurses were rushing in to see me. I was a celebrity already.
Years after I was born, Mom found out the details from a nurse who was there that day.The doctor finally came in and said, “You have a
baby boy. His heart’s good. His lungs are good. But his extremities are not fully formed.” That final bit of information didn’t seem so important to her. She only wanted to hear that I was alive. The phrase “not fully formed” flew in one ear and out the other. Mom knew only that she finally had a baby she could take home. She knew she could love
me.
Out in the waiting room my dad knew something had gone wrong with the delivery. He’s always been a physical person-a hard worker, a handyman. He says it was a shock for him when he first saw me, without hands and feet.
Mom recalls how, when the doctors and nurses had cleared away, Dad came in with a face all droopy.He said, “This one’s going to be a lot of work,” and she said, “I don’t care.” And that, according to her, was the last time that they discussed it. They might have nurses crying, doctors probing around trying to figure out where my fingers and toes were hiding, and friends showering them with pity, but in just minutes, they decided to accept me the way I am. Their lives truly were going to be “a lot of work,” thanks to me. Because the sequence of events were so similar to when Shawn was born, they felt
that this was the hand of God to help them accept me the way I was.
But you have to think- whatever I’ve accomplished in my life, whatever inspiration I’ve been able to give to others-none of that would have been possible if my parents had reacted differently than they did.
Soon after, St. Joseph Hospital closed its obstetrics
department. Mom jokes that they probably had a hard
time getting over me.
Over the years, people have said some really thoughtless things to her about me. Mom remembers one trip to a pediatrician’s office when a little girl saw me and started to make a fuss. The mom just shushed her and said, “Just be glad you weren’t born
like that.”
The mother said it loud enough that Mom and I both heard it. Thinking back, she says, she wished she had turned to me and said, “Just be glad that woman isn’t your mother.” There are so many things she could have said so many times, but she decided to just let the
mean words go.
One of my favorite pictures is of my father holding me in one hand, all two pounds and eleven ounces of me, showing off his new baby boy.
And, as the story goes, he’s saying to his friends, “Look what I made.”
In his eyes, I was his perfect baby. I wasn’t missing anything.”
Brett Eastburn, from Chapter One of “I’m Not Missing Anything“ (Corby Publishing)
To get a copy or copies of ‘I’m Not Missing Anything’ click here
If you have any questions for Corby Publisher Jim Langford about getting the book, you can call him at his office at (574) 784 3482. For companies and organizations that would like to order multiple copies for their people, Jim can quote bulk rates.
Charlie Adams, Motivational Speaker