Quadriplegic speaker challenges students at Sp. Fork school
SPANISH FORK — Jennifer Barrera twisted, squirmed and twisted some more, but try as she might, she couldn’t get a single drop out of her water bottle. As quadriplegic motivational speaker Chad Hymas — as well as Landmark High School’s entire student body — looked on, the senior student squirmed all over the gym floor in an effort to comply with Hymas’s challenge that she take a sip without the use of her hands.
Opposite Barrera, junior Jared Christensen managed to quench his thirst by employing an awkward Yoga pose, but even that took a good five minutes. Finally junior Danny Rodriguez timidly descended the bleachers, unsolicited, to rescue Barrera from her unsuccessful contortions.
“I thought I might get in trouble, but she needed help,” Rodriguez said afterward. “People never say they need help; you just need to go when you see they need it.”
Once Rodriguez had helped Barrera to her drink of water, Hymas brought it all home:
“I need you to leave this school today and give more than you take,” he said. It was the chief message the paralyzed Utah native brought to the Spanish Fork high school at its Wednesday morning assembly. “Takers are a dime a dozen. Givers are harder to find. Do you have the ability to give more than you take?”
It’s a motto Hymas has promoted for nine years, ever since a 2,000-pound bale of hay dropped on top of him at his farm and left him with a broken neck. Though his numb hands are permanently clenched, he can still move his arms; it’s just enough to enable him to roll his wheelchair and operate a laptop, which is all Hymas needs to travel the continent 260 days out of the year delivering inspirational seminars and speeches.
His clients include Wells Fargo, Coca-Cola and the Utah Jazz, to name a few; Landmark principal Joe Kelly brought Hymas in to coach some of his students that are weighed down by troubled pasts.
“I wanted him to talk to the kids about the importance of making good choices no matter what has happened before in their lives,” Kelly said.
That Hymas did, comparing the dangers of drugs and alcohol, unsafe Internet browsing and premarital sex to the hay bale accident he says he should have seen coming, while also illustrating how he’s used good choices to rebound from his “stupid mistake.” He mastered his wheelchair in 18 months; his toothbrush in eight; wheelchair rugby, parasailing, and even typing have followed.
“It’s easier to think you don’t have that power,” Hymas said. “Watch how easy it is to talk about it, but leave here and not do it. Don’t you dare leave here the way you walked in.”
Hymas was unapologetic in his insistence that the students in front of him immediately leave their comfort zones and look for ways to contribute. He traced it back to his father, Kelly, who once not-so-gently urged his son to befriend a handicapped schoolmate; when the accident occurred in 2001, Kelly wasted no time in prodding Hymas to find an avenue for service.
He also pointed out that opportunities to help aren’t always convenient or easy, as was the case when the firemen that rescued him lifted the one-ton bale of hay off his body by hand.
“If somebody came in and said somebody is trapped under a car, how soon would this gym be empty?” he asked, to which his audience replied that it would only take a second. “Why can’t you use that same heart to leave here and do that before the car even falls on somebody, by changing their destiny?”
At the end of the assembly, several students lingered for autographs and a personal introduction. Christensen, who was waiting for a signature to go with the free DVD he got for his participation, said he had already resolved to “get out of his comfort zone and go start meeting new people,” per Hymas’s instructions.
Hymas and his wife, Shondell, live in Rush Valley with their children, Christian, Kyler, Gracee and Jordan.
• Matt Reichman can be reached at (801) 344-2907 or mreichman@heraldextra.com.
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