Seven Wheelchairs: A Life Beyond Polio

by Gary Presley

In 1959, seventeen-year-old Gary Presley was standing in line, wearing his favorite cowboy boots and waiting for his final inoculation of Salk vaccine. Seven days later, a bad headache caused him to skip basketball practice, tell his dad that he was too ill to feed the calves, and walk from barn to bed with shaky, dizzying steps. He never walked again. By the next day, burning with the fever of polio, he was fastened into the claustrophobic cocoon...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1587296934
• ISBN13: 9781587296932
• Release Date: October 2008
• Publisher: University of Iowa Press
• Length: 226 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.7" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

Seven Wheelchairs: A Life beyond Polio

Seven Wheelchairs: A Life beyond Polio presents an unique opportunity to travel with seventeen year old Gary Presley to adulthood with polio as his life long companion. The memoir opens with a shot in the arm, an injection to ward off polio. Seven days later life as the teenager has known it is gone. Presley and the mechanical devices necessary to sustain his life vie for domination. The reader sees a boy struggling with a gamut of emotions, struggling to understand what has happened, to accept the changes polio has visited on him. The author's voice is powerful, commanding, and the reader sees Gary Presley, the man, emerge. The wheelchair, the apparatus to maintain life is present, but it fades into the background. We see the author meet Belinda, his wife, watch as the relationship grows into love and, in time, marriage. We come away with a deeper understanding and knowledge of the obstacles the author faced and recognize the courage it took to triumph.

Don't miss this book

Seven Wheelchairs: A Life beyond Polio By rejecting the well-meaning pity-party typified by "Jerry's Kids," author Gary Presley both empowers and challenges "disabled" people to live a fully-realized life. In the process he challenges "abled" people to set aside their prejudice and see beyond the wheelchair to the man who rides in it. At its core this is a love story. Surviving at times on little more than the strength of his family's unconditional love, Presley ultimately learns to love a wife, her sons, and -- most importantly -- himself. With remarkable honesty and insight, the author strips away his early pretensions and rationalizations, and delivers a powerful lesson on the dangers of pity, indulgence and denial, and the redeeming power of passion, faith and love. Using a style of prose mercifully free of gimmickry and clutter, "7 Wheelchairs: A Life Beyond Polio," ushers the reader into a world populated by gimps and crips in a time before sidewalk cutouts and wheelchair ramps. If you've ever been tempted to borrow your grandmother's handicapped parking permit, you should read this book. It should be mandatory reading for anyone preparing for a life in the fields of health, ministry or social services.

Seven Wheelchairs: A Life Beyond Polio

Worth reading? Absolutely! If your legs were knocked out from under you at 17, how would you live your life? The author of this memoir came to realize that he had a choice, and although it was not a quick or painless lesson, he came to understand that being "a crip" physically does not necessitate being one emotionally. Describing his life from the vantage point of a wheel chair-- "boob high to the world-- Presley shares a fiercely honest look at the difficulties he faced when polio kicked him back to a second "infancy" at age 17. No excuses here, though. Presley is as unsparing of himself as the disease was with his body. In addition to discussing the mechanical logistics of managing life from a wheelchair, Presley shares years of introspection letting the reader in on a private world of fear and trust, love and dependency, prejudice and pride. We're invited to ride on the back of his wheelchairs, from the first grudging roll when life was endured and despair, anger, and passivity prevailed, to the triumphant journey on his latest machine that allows him the freedom he values. Better still we meet the love of his life-- his wife Belinda-- and see how their love and shared faith have trumped disability. An emotional ride, but well worth it!

Insight and wisdom on disabilities

Gary Presley's humanity shines through in this memoir of a half century of living with the aftereffects of polio. He drives a wheelchair and gains independence from it; he works for a living and is married to the love of his life. Now in his 60s, Presley seems to have found wisdom and a degree of serenity, but it has not always been so. The essays that comprise this well-written book make clear the trouble his disability has caused for himself and others, and the pain and anger he has felt. Yet Seven Wheelchairs is striking in the author's lack of self-pity and victimhood. In fact, he disdains pity from anyone, whether from a stranger on the street or from his parish priest. Presley's painful honesty occasionally made me wince, but his writing is professional and his story is powerful. I highly recommend this book for the general reader.

Triumph from tragedy told with gritty truth

I've been fortunate to read bits and pieces, essays and writings of the author's for several years as a fellow member of the Internet Writing Workshop, including much of what is his memoir. But it wasn't until I sat down to read the finished product that I realized what an emotional and insightful read it would be. It is a given that this is stellar prose. The writing alone is enough reason to buy the book and read -- and reread it. But the truth and power of those words. He answers the questions I never thought to ask beginning with the memory of those last steps before polio took away his legs. He told of being confined in an iron lung, not with pity or melodrama, but through the eyes of a devastated, angry teen age boy who was confused and frightened. A boy who had gone from working on his lay up shots to a non-entity swallowed up by a machine. And we move forward with him. We see him making an independent living, but more than that we see him coming to terms with his physical limitations, learning the landscape, what it means to live with disabilities in plain sight, in mainstream culture. We see him moving beyond the anger to find something we all wish we could find -- his true niche where he belongs and can accept and be accepted for the man he is, not for the equipment he must use. Since this is written in connected essays, much of the problem that arises in first memoir and fiction is left behind. No awkward transitions, no tap dancing to get from one important moment to the next. It is a tightly written, powerful book that takes readers inside of the world of disabilities as none before. And inside of the life of one very human, but determined man. I met Gary Presley when I joined the Internet Writing Workshop. His writings, his self-deprecating sense of humor, his truth, and his generous supportive ways drew me to him. When my husband became disabled, Gary jumped right in and helped us find our way through that alien culture called 'disability.' Who knew better this new landscape than a man who had been wheeling through it for nearly a half-century!? He's never maudlin nor melodramatic. It is a book that can be read in pieces or as a whole and the writing itself stands strong alongside the best. A must read for anyone who knows someone living a life fraught with disabilities. A must read for anyone who has ever seen a person in a wheelchair and looked away.