Cole Massie
He is one of the kids on The Learning Channel's: "My Life as a
Child" series.
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For hours, Cole would sit in his wheelchair in his room watching pirate movies on TV and practicing karate moves to help the good guys win, says his mother, Michelle Massie. For his 9th birthday, he wanted only one thing, he told her. Real karate lessons. For weeks, Michelle called every karate instructor in the Yellow Pages only to hear the same answer:
"Sorry, we don't take severely handicapped children in wheelchairs
as students. We are not trained to train them." The Glendale YMCA was her last hope.
There was a long pause. "Mondays and Wednesdays at 3:45 p.m.,"
the sensei said. "See you there." And that's where Cole
has been every Monday and Wednesday at 3:45 p.m. for the past nine months, arriving half an hour early so he can cling to the handrail and inch his crippled body up those last 16 steps to make it to class on time.
"I carried him the first six months, but now he wants to do it himself, show his sensei how far he has come," Michelle said last week. Cole has nothing to prove to anyone, Flores says,
watching the boy struggle up those steps last week.
"He has become the inspiration of my class, and teaching him karate has been the most rewarding thing I have ever done." There was a special class last Saturday at the Glendale YMCA for Cole Massie's 9th birthday.
The sensei bowed and stood in front of his 20 students, who bowed back. Cole sat with them in his wheelchair, practicing all the modified moves Flores had devised for him. Cole knew his test
for a novice's yellow belt - the first color belt in karate - would be coming up soon. He just didn't know when.
Flores led the class through all the techniques, asking Cole before each one what it meant and how to say it in Japanese. "I didn't
tell him, but this was his test," Flores said. "Cole may be limited because of his physical limitations, but he grasped and excelled at the mental, spiritual essence of the karate spirit."
At the end of the session, the sensei announced that in 25 years as a teacher he never had one student score 100 percent on his yellow-belt test. Cole Massie was his first. Flores walked over to the boy and handed him his yellow belt as the class began clapping and cheering.
With a smile that lit up the room, Cole Massie looked up at his sensei, then over at his mom and dad. "I knew I could do it. I
earned it," Cole said. Yes, he had. One step at a time. Fear and doubt
never had a chance.
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See attachment for full story in Word format.
See also about the TLC show:
http://tlc.discovery.com/tv/specials/my-life-child/about.html
and comments about Cole on
http://www.fightingarts.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?
and
http://judoforum.com/index.php?
This boy truly deserves this award, and he is a true example of what
the Martial Arts are all about.
Sincerely,
Richard Favinger, Jr. The Pottstown Judo Club
Youth Instructor / Webmaster http://www.pottstownjudo.com/
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