Cinda Wert Rapp’s spirit wasn’t crushed by a devastating childhood injury, and her experience informed her long career as a teacher.
When I was eight , I fell and was paralyzed from the neck down. After a month in the hospital, I was sent home with my 26-year-old parents, four siblings and the prediction, “She’ll never walk again.”
On the first Friday, I realized that it was church choir practice and started to panic. I had had an excuse to miss choir when I was in the hospital, but now that I was home I had no reason not to be at rehearsal.
I started nagging my pregnant mother, “I have to go to choir!”
With a quiet voice that I’m sure reflected her fear of our new life, she explained, “But you can’t get down the two flights to the car. You can’t walk into the church. You can’t climb the three flights to the choir loft. And even if you got there, you can’t sit in the chair by yourself.”