Tomorrow

Monet Gardens Exhibit, New York Botanical Gardens, Bronx, NY

Copyright 2012:  singeronthesand

Don't brashly announce what you're going to do tomorrow,

you don't know the first thing about tomorrow.

Proverbs 27:1

Just when you think that the world is your oyster, something can happen that turns your whole world upside sets you on your ear.  That certainly happened to Paul Callahan.  When he was twenty-one, he was a student at Harvard University majoring in business with the entire world at his beck and call.  Then Paul slipped on a wet floor, broke his neck and found himself paralyzed from the chest down.  He retained the use of his arms, but not his hands.  Paul spent the next five years traveling from clinics to rehabilitation centers, searching for someone who could help him relearn to walk.  When the doctors finally told him that he would never do so, Paul decided to relearn how to live.

Callahan returned to Harvard, became the first quadriplegic to graduate from that institution, then spent the next 15 years as an assets manager for Goldman Sachs.  A chance sailing trip in 1995 plunged Paul into the passion of his life.  He left his Wall Street job and took over the management of Sail to Prevail - a nonprofit dedicated to teaching disabled children the art of sailing.  Almost exactly thirty years from that slippery floor, 55-year-old Paul Callahan, now a father of two, is scheduled to compete in a 3-man sailing competition at the Paralympics in London, representing the United States.  After placing fifth in the Disabled Sailing World Championships last year, Callahan believes that he and his team have a chance to bring home the gold.

His charity, which started with 8 disabled children, now assists more than a thousand kids every year. When he sails next week for the gold, he is sailing for them.  "I've been very fortunate," he says.  "You've only got a limited amount of time in life.  So you may as well choose to put that towards positive effort, rather than squandering it on the negative.  I've been given an extraordinary gift where I can impact people's lives in a ways other people can't.