W.E.B. Keynote Address

By William Edwin Baxter

 

I grew up the first 15 years of my life in Anaheim, CA; where I attended Trident Junior High School in Anaheim. I set the school 8th Grade Record for the 50-yard Dash with a time of 6.3 seconds. And so I decided to go out for the 8th Grade Track team and become a Track Star. I remember the day of that one track meet with Fremont Jr. High School when I was scheduled to run the 220 Yard Dash. I was so anxious to jump into those starting blocks and become a track star that I overlooked one teensy weensy detail–I forgot to take off my sweat tops and there was a Santa Ana Wind blowing against us. Now for those of you who have never been to Southern California, a Santa Ana Wind is a hard and hot dry wind that blows off of the Mojave Desert. When the starting gun went off, and I pushed off of those starting blocks into the Santa Ana wind with my sweat tops still on, it created a parachute effect. So while I was running down the track like a darn fool in a parachute, there were air resistant currents going up my front, my back, and both of my arm pits, which made it extremely hard for me to keep up with my competitors. But, I kept trying and pining away as my eyes beheld a cloud of dust in front of me getting smaller, and smaller, and smaller! In fact, visualize if you will, from a distance, a cloud of dust moving rapidly down a dirt path, with two sticks in a balloon lagging way in the rear, and you have a pretty good visual image of that race.

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When I finally reached the end of the race (in dead last), I have to say my fellow competitors were TIRED—that is, tired of waiting for me to cross the finish line. Needless to say, this was not the proudest moment in my life. But there was a very important life lesson to be learned here which had a very important impact on my life later on. You see, life is a race which we all run to reach our goals and objectives. And during life’s race, during my adolescence, I was wearing a pair of “Sweat Tops” that were far more cumbersome and far more destructive than the ones I wore on the day of the track meet.

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The story begins long ago, in the Fall of 1954, in a pink house used as a medical clinic in Fullerton, CA; where my mother was giving birth to a baby–ME. I was going to weigh in at between 10 and 11 pounds, and my mother was very small, and so I got stuck in childbirth. The doctors had to make a split decision as to whether or not to take me by C-section. Unfortunately, they made the WRONG decision, and they grabbed a pair of forceps, and they began to pull me out into the world by force, leaving considerable damage to the central nervous system. I was born on October 11th, 1954 developmentally disabled. I was also born with Tourette Syndrome which wasn’t revealed to me until later in life.

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My mother always felt bad about what had happened to me during my childbirth, and so she resolved to “Mainstream me” in normal social and educational settings. This did not go over well with my fellow classmates as they felt that I didn’t belong with them. I was different, they were down on it! As I moved into adolescence, I became more and more the victim of verbal harassment and much bullying! I had been called a “Retard” many times. A lot of this began to take its toll on me. By the time I reach my Sophomore Year in High School, I had let all this weigh me down and defeat me in life so much, it began to show in my appearance. My grades were starting to plummet, and slipped more and more into mental and emotional anguish. These were the sweat tops that were weighing me down, and I had to make a decision in my life: whether or not to continue letting all this weigh down and defeat me in life, or would I “Throw off those sweat tops!” and go above and beyond my disabilities, the verbal harassment, the naysayers, and the bullies, and live the productive life my mother wanted for me. I finally made the latter of the two decisions in the Fall of 1972, and it was the right decision!

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The Fall of 1972 brought me to Thomas S. Wootton High School in Rockville, MD; and there I resolved to throw off my sweat tops, and get involved in the life of my new school. I got involved by serving as a “Team Manager” for Varsity Wrestling, the Track Squad, and Varsity Football. I took pride in the work that I did as a team manager, and the coaches grew to like me and respect me a great deal for the work that I did at Thomas S. Wootton High School. The athletes, some of them the most popular kids in school, looked up to these coaches. And so, they too grew to like me and respect a great deal. This set off a chain reaction, as cheerleaders, pom pom girls, and the rest of the student body soon followed suit. By the middle of Football Season during the beginning of my Senior Year, I had acquired total high school popularity. I lettered in all three sports as a Varsity Team Manager, twice in Wrestling. Thomas S. Wootton High School was only four years old back then and so I was the First Team Manager to become a Varsity Three-Letterman in the history of that school. That also went over big with the school, and my social life was never the same again.  I also received four music letters–two in the High School Band, and two in the High School Concert Choir. I graduated from Thomas S. Wootton High School in June of 1974, and was voted the “Most Improved Student in the Class of 1974” which was announced at the graduation ceremony along with the Valedictorian and the Top Ten in the Class. There were naysayers among the faculty of Thomas S. Wootton High School who felt that I would never last long if I had decided to go to college; but, I was on a roll in my life, and once again, I decided to throw off the sweat tops, and ignore the naysayers. In August of 1979, I graduated from California State University East Bay (in the San Francisco Bay Area) and from that time on, I chose never again to let my disabilities and naysayers weigh me down and defeat me in life, but to continue to rise above all of that by accomplishing great things, that is, things which society doesn’t expect from one who is developmentally disabled.

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During the 1980’s, I took private voice lessons, mostly from an Opera Singer, and learned to become a soloist. I was in an opera once myself. It was called “Amahl and the Night Visitors” which was the first opera to be performed at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in December of 1986. It featured Opera Stars Rod Gilfry and Susana Guzman. In the Fall of 1990, I became a Member of Toastmasters International, and learned to become a Public Speaker. I earned the Distinguished Toastmaster Award (D.T.M.) in February of 1996, which is the highest award a Toastmasters Member may receive.  I have been a Member of Toastmasters for almost 30 years now, and during that time, I placed in over 20 major speech competitions, including a “District Championship in Tall Tale Speech” in the Spring of 1994. But, one of the biggest honors for me in the speech competitions has been singing the National Anthem at Toastmasters Speech Contests (which ties in with the voice lessons) which I have done since the Spring of 1991, clear up to the present. ​

In the Summer of 2005, I decided to branch out and I began to sing the National Anthem for Professional/Minor League Sporting Events which I did various times from the Summer of 2005 to the Summer of 2011. I moved to Colorado Springs in August of 2010, and I sang the National Anthem at Colorado Springs Sky Sox Games (twice), in front of thousands. In December of 2014, my employer, Service Source Inc. presented me with an award: “The Going Above and Beyond Award” which snapshots the last 40+ years of my life. Service Source presented me with the “President’s Award for Service Excellence” However, I had been ignoring a big calling in my life—to become a children’s author.

About twenty earlier, when I was winning a lot of Toastmasters Speech Contests by making up stories and telling them, a fellow Toastmaster friend told me that I had missed my call. He told me that I should have been writing children’s books, and that I probably would have done very well doing that. So I decided to add that to my bucket list; however, I kept putting that off year after year, after year, thinking I do not need to do that until after I retire. I was also afraid of embarking on this venture of becoming a children’s author because I was afraid that I would fail and not be able to accomplish that goal. I was afraid of doing all that work and no publisher would want to publish my work. So, I found myself putting on another pair of sweat tops and letting them hold me back from my goals. Then something happened during the Summer of 2016 which changed my life once again. I was faced with my biggest obstacle ever.

All the years I have been singing solos in public, I never had any problems with breathing while I was singing, until one Sunday in June 2016. During the Spring of 2016, I was scheduled to sing a solo in church—a medley of Old Gospel Hymns. The solo went over well and all, but I had more problems breathing than I ever had while singing solos. One of the pastors of my church noticed this, and he told me that I needed to be checked out by a doctor as soon as possible. I went to my doctor and he naturally checked out my heart which is the first thing a physician would check in a situation such as this. My heart was fine, and I was given a clean bill of health. I then figured that whatever the problem was, it would pass. What I didn’t realize was that blood clots were beginning to form in my lungs, and I was on a collision course with a life event which I’ve come to call “The Black Iron Box.”

Then on the Saturday morning of July 9, 2016 it happened; as I was about to get out of the shower, I suffered what a doctor later diagnosed as a massive pulmonary embolism. I developed severe nausea and became very weak. I had just enough strength to step out of the shower and sit down on the toilet seat where I bent over with my face parallel to the bathroom floor. Then I passed out, and I fell forward hitting my head on the wall causing it to bleed. Just as I came too, my niece, Rebekah found me lying on the floor and she called the paramedics. When the paramedics came, I was too weak to even sit up; so, they found a blanket, wrapped me in it, and carried me down the stairs like a giant tamale. Then they carried me out the front door into the front yard where they had a gurney waiting for me.  They loaded me on the gurney and hooked me up to some I.V.’s and put me in the ambulance. Then they turned on the sirens and made a bee-line to Memorial Hospital in Colorado Springs as fast as they could get me there. By this time, I was having a great deal of difficulty breathing.

On the way to the hospital, I told the paramedics that I was going to die. One of the paramedics told me I wasn’t going to die, but that I had a blood clot in my lungs. When we arrived at the Emergency Room entrance, I could hardly inhale. One of the E.R. Staff Workers came out with a mask and put it over my nose, knocking me out. This was to keep me calm so that they could work on me. Then they rolled me into Emergency Room. I do not recall anything that happened in the Emergency Room as I was in an induced coma; but, I later found out that while I was in the E.R; I had stopped breathing at one point, and was near death. The medical staff had to resuscitate me before any damage was done to my brain. Through Divine Intervention, they managed to stabilize me

While I was in a coma, I had what appeared at first to be a dream, where I was in this black metal container. Later, I learned that it probably wasn’t a dream, but that I had slightly come to inside a bariatric chamber. When I looked up at the top of this chamber, I saw two metal squares rotating around and around. So, I have come to call this entire event in my life as “The Black Iron Box.” During this particular time, I was all alone in the black iron box, but I heard voices coming from above and outside the box. I tried to speak, but I could not utter a sound. Literally, I could not utter a sound, because by that time, they had already put a breathing tube down my windpipe and it was pinned up against my voice box. Soon, the “Black iron box” faded out, as I slipped back into the darkness of a coma. I was taken to the Intensive Care Unit and prayer vigils went out. I was in a coma for a total of twenty-six hours. I arrived at the hospital where I was put under on Saturday Morning just after 8:00 A.M. I came to in the Intensive Care Unit at Memorial Hospital on Sunday Morning at 10:00 A.M. The medical staff came in and removed the breathing tube from my windpipe, and I began the road to recovery.

I spent the entire Sunday in I.C.U. where I was kept under observation, and then I was transferred to a regular hospital room Monday Morning the next day. The staff began the long process of getting my blood regulated so that there would be no more blood clots. This was interrupted on late Wednesday Morning, July 13; however, when the doctor came in and told me that I was bleeding from the liver, and had been losing blood. The doctor told me that the medical staff needed to get me down stairs as soon as possible, so they could go in and find out exactly where the bleeding was, and try to stop it. I thought I was going to die after all, as I thought this would entail cutting me open. What I didn’t realize, however, was there were a lot of catheter procedures now. When they got me downstairs, they went in with a catheter to find out where the bleeding was, but by that time, the bleeding had stopped, and it never started up again for the rest of the time I was in the hospital. They also went in with another catheter in order to install an I.V.C. Filter in me which would keep any other blood clots from going to my lungs or my heart. After a couple of days where there was no more internal bleeding, the medical staff resumed the process of trying to get my blood regulated so that there would be no more blood clots. This process took several days. Two Toastmaster friends brought me a “Happy Birthday” balloon. The meaning behind the balloon was “This is the first day of the rest of your life.” This meant I was not going to die. I received visits from several Toastmasters friends, as well as church friends and family. I was finally released from the hospital on July 24^th, 2016.

After being released from hospital, I began to think about my bucket list item of becoming a children’s author with my Toastmasters Stories. Since I was released from the hospital, I realized that life is too short, so once again, I threw off my sweat tops. After New Year’s Day, 2017; I began to write my treasury book of short stories entitled: “W.E.B Tales.” W.E.B. is my initial name which stands for: William Edwin Baxter. W.E.B. Tales was published as an e-book in May 2018, and then later it was published as a paperback in July 2018. I have had several other children’s books published since the publication of W.E.B. Tales.

A lot of people for the most part do not survive pulmonary embolisms. On top of that mine was massive. I am very lucky to be alive today; but I am still alive for a reason. The reason is that my life and work as a Self-Advocate is not finished yet. This includes my storytelling, folk singing, and the work that I do for Service Source Inc. as a Civilian Contract Worker out at the U.S. Army Post at Fort Carson, Colorado. During this experience in my life, I found out how many good friends I have in the Colorado Springs Area, even though I have only lived here a few years. I look forward to several more years of fellowshipping with these friends, and continuing to do the things I enjoy the most. Since my near-death experience, I continued to not let any obstacles, including death, keep me from reaching my goals in life. In August 2018, Service Source, my employer, awarded me with “Employee of the Year.” I have also tended to another bucket list item I had prolonged, and that was to make a recording of the Christmas Carol I wrote entitled “Bethlehem! Oh Bethlehem! “I have continued to sing the National Anthem at Toastmasters Events, and at Colorado Springs Switchbacks (Professional Soccer) Games.

I am 65 years old now; but the passion for singing and public speaking still burns inside of me. I don’t do all this to change who or what I am. I am a man who is developmentally disabled. I don’t do all this to silence the naysayers, or even put people with Type A Personality in their place. I do these things to “Go above and beyond” my disabilities, and the naysayers, and not let them defeat me in life. I also do these things to be an inspiration to others, especially others like myself.

What are your bucket list goals in your life which you want to achieve? Do you find yourself procrastinating and not working to achieve these goals and objectives? What kind of “Sweat Tops” are slowing you down? Is it fear of failure or past failures? Are you thinking, “I already bombed a couple of times trying to achieve my goal, why should I bother working to achieve my goal any longer?” It is a good thing Thomas Alva Edison didn’t adopt this negativity, or we would all be still using gas lamps and lighting candles. Thomas Edison failed hundreds of times while trying to invent the electric light bulb before he finally got it right. If he had listened to one of his school teachers telling him he was “Addled” when he was a young boy, and he had taken that to heart, he probably wouldn’t have become one of the greatest inventors in American History. Thomas Edison was dyslexic which is a major learning disability. That didn’t stop him from running life’s race and reaching his goals. Dr. Samuel Johnson had Tourette Syndrome the same as me. Did he let that keep him from his goals? Tourette Syndrome was not his only disability. None of his disabilities stopped Samuel Johnson from becoming one of Great Britain’s Greatest Writers and Playwrights.

The moral of this story is this: As you run life’s race towards your goals, objectives, and destinies, whatever slows you down, or weighs you down from achieving your goals, whether they be learning disabilities like Dyslexia and Tourette Syndrome, physical disabilities, naysayers and bullies; past failures, or even the fear of failure, THROW OFF THOSE SWEAT TOPS! Maintain a fast steady speed in reaching your goals, objectives, and destinies. GO ABOVE AND BEYOND, and cross that finish line.

W.E.B. Autobiographies