Advancing the Olympic Flame...

 Gratitude Reflection and Story

Getting the honor of running with the Olympic Torch...a story of challenge, resilience, and gratitude!

Every Olympic torch relay has a theme. The 2024 Paris Olympics has a theme of solidarity and diversity.

The 2002 Olympics theme was Inspiration.

The Olympic Torch relay takes place before, and leading up to the opening ceremony to ignite the theme throughout the world ahead of the formal Olympics. The flame symbolizes the Olympic ideals of peace, friendship, and mutual understanding, and its journey around the world serves to unite nations and set the stage for the competition.

My dear friend, and workmate, Patty Lukes, one of the other early females in the field to call on GM dealerships, kindly nominated me to be considered for the huge honor in 2000. She wrote about how, in 1996, I was working in Madison, Wisconsin calling on over 45 dealers in the state while also teaching a 12-week Dale Carnegie course on Monday nights as I was earning my MBA. At that time, when I was making one of my regular skydivers (that was a big part of my life then) on the first Sunday in between the preview session where people could learn more about the experience of Dale Carnegie Training, and the first class for my evening commitment that I thought my right ankle was sprained. The next morning following my stepping in a hole while walking in from a safe landing, I went to the doctor after icing it on and off all night only to learn I had both tibia and fibula fractures - two broken bones in my lower leg. That meant no more skydiving for a bit, and no driving, either. It meant a cast, then a boot, a wheelchair, then crutches...for what turned out to be over 12 weeks!

While GM leadership kindly offered for me to go on sick leave, I said "No thanks, I am not sick". Still, I couldn't drive, lived in a three-story townhome, and way before Uber and Lyft, decided to ask my dealers if their delivery drivers could work with me (and taxis) to get from each location to the next. They graciously did! Then, for school, I had a classmate who drove a motorcycle, so I figured it couldn't get worse on my leg, and so onto the motorcycle I went (don't even ask about my hair), and then a wonderful Graduate Assistant/Teaching Assistant, Marin, sweetly offered to drive me to/from the Monday night classes after work. Logistics were sorted out...or so I thought.

On that first official night of class, session 1 of 12, I showed up in a wheelchair, and class went well. Everyone was incredibly supportive, and it took nothing away from the facilitation, so it took nothing away from the most important part - the class members' experience.

Marin and I drove home on a high from the success of the first session, and when she was getting me into the garage to start bumping my way up the (many) stairs, we were greeted with water, about three feet of it in my garage. Yikes! Even though it did not seem like anything else could go wrong, it was then we learned from a neighbor that the water was from the sewer, not from rainfall. Thankfully, Marin, at nearly 11:00 PM,, bailed water and we worked with bleach to be as sanitary as possible.

You can imagine how glad I was to have asked Dennis, the District Manager in Milwaukee, to come and get my company vehicle so that the temptation to drive it would be removed! That foreshadowed the garage being empty and a company car not getting flooded (AKA ruined) by the water!

While I shed some tears throughout the 12 weeks that kept my leg in atrophy, overall, I decided there were lessons to learn. Learning to ask for assistance, learning to appreciate what I could do, learning the challenges some people have their whole life, and learning to be grateful for the few friends I'd made, and how they came through for me, were all focuses for getting through the experience with growth over the groans each time I'd go to get my cast off, only to be told one or two more weeks...all the way until the day it was finally healed enough from my freedom!

Free from the cast/boot, I was full of gratitude and appreciation, humility and thanks for the unexpected lessons learned and especially for the people, some strangers who held a door, and some acquaintances who became lifelong friends, who cared.

The final day of that Monday night 12-week class, I was able to walk on my own (slowly, with a very weak leg, yet on my own!)! It was as though lottery winnings had been deposited in my account. I was rich - rich in health and hope!

Patty apparently captured all of that plus a bit more about our friendship that started rocky when I was an intern at General Motors and she approved my expense reports (that is a story in and of itself!!).

While Wikipedia states the torch relayers are randomly selected from nominations, the letter I received stated I was specifically selected and bestowed with the honor of Nike sending shoes, Kodak taking photos, and a commitment to training with a 3.5-pound verticle torch in my hand (practice at the gym during the Winter included running on a treadmill with a water bottle above my head).

Still, on January 5, 2002, at the location to take the bus to be dropped at our torch relay spots, there were two Olympic Torch Relay representatives on that magical, energized bus, and they asked each person to go around and introduce ourselves and state the reason we were selected to represent in the relay. Long before the turn was mine, I felt fraudulent and like I was not worthy, for there were people who survived cancer, a man running in his wife's spot because her cancer came back, a young man born without fully formed hips, and others who truly deserved to be there. With tears in my eyes, a quiver in my voice, and embarrassment in my soul, I eeked out "Debbie Gross, and really, I don't think I belong here." so quickly did this Olympic Torch Relay representative, who may have been 24 years old share with me aloud with everyone looking on and listening that the theme that year was INSPIRATION, and that they selected a few people across the country who simply lived their life inspirational each day, and that I was one of those people.

I cried a little harder.

Then I smiled, with a full heart and felt that seat really was mine to appreciate. Then I got to run double the distance of the legs of the torch run to advance the Olympic flame to Jazz Great Ramsey Lewis of the Ramsey Lewis Trio. What an honor. Until Mr. Lewis' death, we stayed connected, and he graciously met with Michael and me when in Clearwater to relive our Torch Relay days. What a legend!!

That thoughtful woman on the bus connected my head and heart to that message. The honor replaced the unsure feeling, and the joy of the opportunity moved me to run my heart out! She also reminded me to speak up, speak out, and not doubt being where I was. Those messages, and lessons live on within me to get to share with others today!

What an experience, and what a memory for which I continue to be thankful as I cheer "Go Team USA!!" all Olympics, each Olympics!

#BeYourBest #Kind #Consideration #GoUSA #GoTeamUSA #Leadership #PersonalDevelopment #ProfessionalDevelopment