Meet Bobby

I met Bobby Arrington 6 months ago at the church parking lot. We stopped to talk and I found out that he just got laid off from Bank of America. But his attitude about it was contagiously positive – “Maybe I’ll travel more during this time off, I just got back from Rome”. I did not ask him directly but silently I wondered – Rome? You’re in a wheelchair. That was what peeked my curiosity about Bobby.

Bobby rolls in to church with his wife pushing his wheelchair. He is mostly quiet and makes you think he is uninterested until you get him to start talking.
On the evening of October 1976 Bobby had a car accident, which fractured his cervical spine and paralyzed him from the neck down. Bobby spent almost 9 months between rehab and the hospital. The doctors told him he would never walk again. But Bobby’s faith in God combined with his stubbornness prevailed, “ As I laid there in the ICU paralyzed from the neck down, I told myself there must be a reason for my still being here after the accident and I must try to find this reason.”
When his rehabilitation completed, he managed to regain the use of his hands, arms and legs and was discharged with a wheelchair and crutches. His grandmother visited him and told him he will be ok. This statement of confidence was the push that made Bobby believe that he could accomplish anything even with his now disabled body. He was about 28 years old when the accident happened; he was working 12-hour days and was looking forward to a promotion that would bring him the normal working hours. He was also starting to date a new girlfriend. He was supposed to pick her up at the airport that night and when he didn’t show up, she waited for his office to open the next morning and was informed of his accident. He did not see or hear from her again.

Being that I like to travel I wanted to know more about his travels. Did the first trip after the accident a way to try and prove to himself that he is "normal" and can do anything he wants to do? “No, by the time I had taken my first trip abroad, I had already proven to myself that I can do almost anything that I set my mind on.”
Twenty-three years after the accident Bobby decided to visit every continent. As of this writing he has traveled to 25 countries on 6 continents in his wheelchair by bus, boat, trains and airplanes.

Every time I see Bobby, he is always talking about studying for a class or reading up on something. “It seems that you are relentless in your pursuit of knowledge” I asked him one day. “Yes, because I believe that any day that I don’t learn something new, is a wasted day and the amount of knowledge that I have acquired in my lifetime is only a drop from a medicine dropper into the ocean as compared to the amount of knowledge there is to be acquired. I am driven by a thirst for knowledge –the more I acquired, the more I want to attain.”

That explains why Bobby knows a lot; he is like a rolling encyclopedia. But one thing I really wanted to delve into is about depression and anger and the blame game. Did he ever blame God, did he go through depression. I wanted him to tell me that he was depressed for a number of years, hoping maybe that if he said it that I can really say he is “normal”. But no, he didn’t go through these normal stages, but instead he looked at the accident as a wake up call; he had been burning the candle at both ends working hard and partying hard. Maybe this explains when you see Bobby now, he exudes calmness and at peace with himself, mostly because he is at peace with God. God gave him the understanding about the accident that gave him the peace that surpasses all understanding.

I ended the interview with this question: What would you like to say to someone out there who has just been given a bad news by his or her doctor. Bobby knows the answer too well.

“For those individuals out there who are feeling hopeless, because the doctors just told them that they would not be able to do things that they had done before the injury, I would say to them –don’t give up living life because there are many ways to complete a modified version of the activities that they did prior to the injury. I learned to scuba dive and become PADI certified using only my upper body. When there is no way to modify an activity, then this would be an excellent time to develop new interests. I changed professions from a Chemistry degree to getting educated in Information Technology and became a computer programmer. Another thing I learned from this accident, I found that it takes a very special individual who is able to accept and look past the challenges of the physical body and develop a relationship. But don’t give up, God gave me that "special" individual and I married her 2 years ago.”

I always believe that every person not only has a story but is a story in themselves. There's more to learn from and about Bobby. Last Sunday over lunch at a friends house, I learned that Bobby is again learning something new-he is learning how to mimic his wife's accent. When he did it, I bust out laughing and so did his wife.