When I left the elevator and went to my room， I could think ofnothing but this cheerful cripple. So I hunted him up and askedhim to tell me his story.
“It happened in 1929，” he told me with a smile. “I had goneout to cut a load of hickory poles to stake the beans in my garden.
I had loaded the poles on my Ford and started back home.
Suddenly one pole slipped under the car and jammed the steeringapparatus at the very moment I was making a sharp turn. The carshot over an embankment and hurled me against a tree. My spinewas hurt. My legs were paralysed.
“I was twenty-four when that happened， and I have nevertaken a step since.”
Twenty-four years old， and sentenced to a wheel-chair forthe rest of his life！ I asked him how he managed to take it socourageously， and he said： “I didn’t.” He said he raged andrebelled. He fumed about his fate. But as the years dragged on， he found that his rebellion wasn’t getting him anything exceptbitterness. “I finally realised，” he said， “that other people werekind and courteous to me. So the least I could do was to be kindand courteous to them.”
I asked if he still felt， after all these years， that his accident hadbeen a terrible misfortune， and he promptly said： “No.” He said：
“I’m almost glad now that it happened.” He told me that after hegot over the shock and resentment， he began to live in a differentworld. He began to read and developed a love for good literature.
In fourteen years， he said， he had read at least fourteen hundredbooks； and those books had opened up new horizons for him andmade his life richer than he ever thought possible. He began tolisten to good music； and he is now thrilled by great symphoniesthat would have bored him before. But the biggest change wasthat he had time to think. “For the first time in my life，” he said，“I was able to look at the world and get a real sense of values. Ibegan to realise that most of the things I had been striving forbefore weren’t worth-while at all.”
As a result of his reading， he became interested in politics，studied public questions， made speeches from his wheel-chair！
He got to know people and people got to know him. Today BenFortson—still in his wheel-chair—is Secretary of State for theState of Georgia！
During the last thirty-five years， I have been conducting adulteducationclasses in New York City， and I have discovered thatone of the major regrets of many adults is that they never went tocollege. They seem to think that not having a college education isa great handicap. I know that this isn’t necessarily true because Ihave known thousands of successful men who never went beyondhigh school. So I often tell these students the story of a man Iknew who had never finished even grade school.
He was brought up in blighting poverty. When his father died，his father’s friends had to chip in to pay for the coffin in whichhe was buried. After his father’s death， his mother worked in anumbrella factory ten hours a day and then brought pieceworkhome and worked until eleven o’clock at night.
The boy brought up in these circumstances went in foramateur dramatics put on by a club in his church. He got sucha thrill out of acting that he decided to take up public speaking.
This led him into politics. By the time he reached thirty， he waselected to the New York State legislature. But he was woefullyunprepared for such a responsibility. In fact， he told me thatfrankly he didn’t know what it was all about. He studied the long，complicated bills that he was supposed to vote on-but， as far ashe was concerned， those bills might as well have been writtenin the language of the Choctaw Indians. He was worried andbewildered when he was made a member of the committee onforests before he had ever set foot in a forest. He was worried andbewildered when he was made a member of the State BankingCommission before he had ever had a bank account. He himselftold me that he was so discouraged that he would have resignedfrom the legislature if he hadn’t been ashamed to admit defeat tohis mother. In despair， he decided to study sixteen hours a dayand turn his lemon of ignorance into a lemonade of knowledge.
By doing that， he transformed himself from a local politician intoa national figure and made himself so outstanding that The NewYork Times called him “the best-loved citizen of New York”.
I am talking about Al Smith.
