Thoughts while Traveling

CHALLENGES: Student Concentrates on Abilities


Student Takes Challenges and Doubters as They Come.
Written by Philip Walzer - The Virginian - Pilot

NORFOLK - Clay Rushing can take care of the doubters. Like the guy at Virginia Wesleyan College a few years back who couldn't believe Rushing is a black belt in tae kwon do.


"Come here," Rushing said.
The hapless guy, looking at Rushing in his wheelchair, fearing little, approached, and Rushing got him in an armlock.

Then there were the ones who said he couldn't graduate from college. Wrong again.


Rushing is finishing his studies at Virginia Wesleyan this week with roughly a 3.4 grade point average, midway between an A and a B. He majored in religious studies and will head for Regent University's divinity school.

Give the doubters a little credit this time.

In addition to cerebral palsy, Rushing has a medley of learning disabilities that leave him unable to read or write. So how did he make it through college?

A whole lot of willpower.
A buoyant attitude.
A dedicated corps of assistants and cheerleaders.
An incredible memory.
"God is good," Rushing said.

He can pick up the phone to order pizza, but he can't cook.

He can take off his shirt but needs help putting it on.

His speech is slow but clear. His head sometimes lolls back, and his eyes close for long seconds when he's deep in thought.

He often raises his scrunched hands to face-level, his thumbs tucked under his middle fingers.

A crew of part-time assistants, some of them fellow students, helps him throughout the day. They help him shower and go to the bathroom. They tape his lectures. They record chapters of his texts that are unavailable on tape. They take dictation for his papers.

But it's not all them.

Rushing figures he's at the college's Learning Resource Center five to 10 hours a day. "He is always striving to get the very best grade," said Linda H. Sykes, an assistant at the center, who gets choked up thinking about his departure from the college.

"We don't sit down and do the work for him," she said. "He tells us where to go on the Internet." For papers, "he can be dictating information to me or to a work-study student, and we read it back, and he just continues on."

It's pointless, he said, to dwell on his limitation. Rushing prefers to concentrate on what he can do. Like his third-degree black belt in tae kwon do.
His interest was piqued at age 10. "Ever since I saw 'The Karate Kid,' I wanted to do that," he said.

Some of the movements he can perform; the rest he can define.
That's his incredible memory again.

"Whether they're passages from the Koran or the New Testament, he remembers them," said his adviser, Craig Wansink, a professor of religious studies. "When you get into a discussion when people are fumbling, trying to figure out a particular verse, he can point to it directly, right away."

Rushing, a Methodist-turned-evangelical-Presbyterian, knows he probably can't serve as a senior pastor of a church. But he hopes to take on another role, perhaps as a teacher.

"This has put me in a unique position to bless people," Rushing said, "and show them that in spite of my disability I can still be happy and joyful and praise God."
He also knows this: Someday, somewhere, he will walk again.

This time, Rushing can point doubters to the story in Matthew about Jesus healing the paralyzed man.

"The time will come, whether in this life or the hereafter, that I will not need this chair," he said. "I see this as a temporary situation."