Even In His Passing, He Talks

My father, DeWitt Gilmore Jr, was a true inspiration to me. Despite being an amputee – he lost his leg in a baseball accident in 1948 – he never let his disability hold him back from achieving his goals. In fact, in 1950, just two years after the accident, according to the local newspaper, my dad was back on the pitcher's mound, “mowing down” batters for White Plains High with the help of a prosthesis/his replacement leg. And while he won the game for the team, the article in this post doesn’t mention his mighty challenge, how he was playing with one leg. The writer was so busy being creative & eloquent (and razor-sharp) in a Mark Twain kind of way, that the great achievement underlying it all was lost. Almost (heh-heh). But over 70 years later my sister Julie Norris dug up an old newspaper article at the White Plains library in the midst of the pandemic, and this article tells it all. I had an awakening moment when surgically reading thru the aged document, come to find out that the article was written two years AFTER his accident. That is, AFTER he lost his leg. For us, that was so monumental, the realisation that dad recuperated, and was still able to win the baseball field with his high school team. Yeah hold that, slacker! Procrastinator. Or as my dad used to say “stick that in your pipe and smoke it!”

So, at 4am i’m taking a break from my Creative momentum, not to throw my DNA in your face, but to ask  this question: what have you given up on? What is the big tragedy in your life that stops you? What sorts of excuses have you leaned on to comfort your denial; excuses, that have stopped you from whatever the goal is or was?

STOP IT WITH THE EXCUSES!

Me. Gilmore has spoken.