On this past Thursday I was honored to be invited to hear a marvelous man speak at a local company. The CEO of the company was a friend of mine, and she knew that I would really like to hear him, so I was invited as part of "The Press". His name is Michael Hingson, and he is the blind man who, with his guide dog Roselle, walked down the stairs from the 78th floor of the North tower after it was hit by the first plane on Sept. 11th. He was in our town as an inspirational speaker about teamwork and what he learned about teamwork from the wonderful dog that led him while he and all those others walked down the stairs. I had read about him in various books about that awful day, and he does have a book out that was on the Best Seller list for a long time. It's called "Thunder Dog", and we all got autographed copies of the book - it even had Roselle's paw print on it! Of course, Roselle is dead now - she died just last year from some sort of autoimmune blood disease that the vet felt was caused by the exposure to the fumes from burning jet fuel. Anyway, he had his new dog with him - a 4 year old yellow lab named Apache. What an amazing man! He was basically blind since he was an infant, but he learned to ride his bicycle all over the neighborhood, went to regular school (hadn't been taught braile yet), and actually never felt handicapped at all. He did talk about the discrimination in the job market he had to put up with, and schools that didn't want to admit him, but most of his talk was about getting out of that tower. So interesting, sad, and inspiring! If you get the chance, read his book - it's not long. The picture I took was from my cell phone, so it's not very good. Sorry.
