Kevin Olson, Chanute, wrote a book. You should read it.
“Learning to Live with It” is Olson’s story of how his dreams as a teenager crashed down one summer day when he dived head-first into a lake near Toronto. He heard a “crack like a gunshot” and was paralyzed from the shoulders down as a result from the dive into shallow water. He nearly drowned before a friend came to his aid.
Olson will speak twice today at Humboldt’s Biblesta, in an interview with Lloyd Houk at 10:30 this morning and again this evening at the event’s youth rally.
Houk loaned me the book Wednesday. Home from work, I thought I’d read a few pages and get the gist of what he had to say. I could barely put it down.
Olson was a robust 19-year-old, an all-state basketball player at Chanute High School. He wanted a career of some sort and eventually a wife and children. Farming was in his blood, and the day of his accident came during a retreat with friends from the rigors of hauling hay.
Damage to his spine left little hope for Olson, and for a time, lying on his back in a bed that encompassed his body and his head held rigid by a halo, he wondered if death wouldn’t be a better alternative.
Accepting his circumstances wasn’t easy, but faith in God paved the way.
He wrote about his last high school game, when he missed a shot at the buzzer that would have given Chanute victory, and how hesitation on his part in making a pass might have made a difference.
“At the time,” Olson wrote, “I could not see anything good ever coming from that experience, but now I see it as part of a life-long lesson God gave me through the game of basketball to be unselfish. I saw how God has a way of miraculously giving back to us when we simply give our lives to Him.”
Today, 22 years after the accident, Olson goes about in a motorized wheelchair that he controls by blowing and sucking in a straw. He wrote his book one letter at a time with a mouth stick.
He tutors elementary students, served several years as a youth minister at two churches in Fredonia and, as he will today, encourages youths to accept and deal with challenges life sends their ways.
—Bob Johnson
Kevin’s story is a must-read
