CHICAGO _ Amanda McGrory, who has set course records in the Paris and New York marathons and finished first in multiple Bank of America Chicago marathons, will compete in the 800 meter, 1,500 meter, 5,000 meter and the marathon at the Paralympics Games in Rio.
But recently she was at Lake Shore Park, nestled behind the Museum of Contemporary Art, racing around the track and chatting with patients from the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago _ including 9-year-old Miranda Cervantes.
"She's super cool," Miranda told me. "She said I should practice and practice. Maybe one day she's going to be my best friend, like I imagine."
Miranda has a history of lupus with subsequent brain aneurysms, which have kept her in a wheelchair since November. McGrory, 30, was diagnosed with transverse myelitis at age 5 and has used a wheelchair ever since.
McGrory came to Lake Shore Park to participate in one of RIC's monthly sports-days activities that patients can participate in post-injury. She talked to the crowd and demonstrated her racing chair with a few spins around the track.
"When I came out of rehab, I had no idea wheelchair sports even existed," McGrory told me. "I had never met anyone else with a disability who was young and active, so my parents looked for a really long time to help me get involved in sports and meet other kids with disabilities. I think it's a really cool experience for the patients at RIC to see this while they're still inpatients."
McGrory, originally from Pennsylvania, lives in Champaign, Ill., and is earning her master's degree in library sciences at the University of Illinois.
"There's so much more that comes out of an experience like this other than that I'm a paralympian and I'm going to Rio," she said. "I went to college, I'm getting a master's, I own my own house; I drove myself up here. I think those things are encouraging as well."
Tom Huene, an Arlington Heights, Ill., father of four, was in the crowd gathered to watch McGrory. Huene had surgery in 2010 to remove a spinal cord tumor and now competes in national track and field events using a wheelchair.
"I've been in crisis," Huene said. "These are people who are fresh in crisis. I know how scared I was. I cried _ I cried a lot. Everybody has a little bit different story of how they got here, but maybe if they can see me _ a few years ago I was laying in a bed crying, and today I drove here by myself _ it gives them that vision of maybe getting there."
While Huene and I talked, McGrory and Miranda moved to the tennis courts, where they played a round as Miranda's mother watched.
"I like her, and I love her," Miranda told me afterward, beaming.
"The most important thing patients can take away from this is that they can lead an active and healthy lifestyle when they leave the hospital," said Mike Wehner, manager of therapy and recreation at RIC. "They don't have to wait a week or a month or a year from now."
I think the most important thing the rest of us can take away is that the world is full of people quietly striving to improve the lives of others. We just have to listen closely to hear their stories.
