In high school, Runyan fell in love with distance running, with its special blend of team camaraderie and individual triumph. But she was no track superstar. She didn't even qualify for a sports scholarship and though she made the college team, she spent most of her time on the bench. Only after graduate school (for education of the deaf) did Runyan begin training in earnest, getting a late start on the physical setbacks and the personal sacrifices required of elite athletes. But she was well used to taking the hard road. In the summer of '98 she suffered six injuries in a row. "I was 29 years old, I had no coach. I had a part-time job that paid nothing. I pretty much didn't know if I'd ever run again. But I didn't pack my bags and go home to California. I didn't just flee."
Joe Tom Easley: An aye for an eye
In March of 2004, at least 1 million New York Times readers saw a harrowing front-page photo of 13-year-old Ayad al-Sirowiy, an Iraqi child whose face was burned and shredded by an American cluster bomb. Joe Tom Easley, retired law lecturer and long-time gay rights activist, was one of them.
"Ayad's picture was the kind of thing that would stop you dead in your tracks," says Easley. "He was so small, his right eye was put out and his face was terrifically discolored by the explosion. He looked very sad." As he drank his coffee that morning, Easley's sense of moral duty swung into gear, until it locked in a conviction that he had to find the boy and bring him to the U.S. for medical treatment.
That passion enabled Easley to withstand a daunting list of human, logistical and bureaucratic obstacles to helping Ayad. Professional negotiation skills saw him through cold calls to high offices where he enlisted others in his cause. Yet Easley insists that nothing he did was rocket science. After a nine-month tangle with the Department of Homeland Security, the application to bring Ayad and his father to the U.S. was rejected. Furious but determined, Easley called the number at the bottom of the rejection notice and just happened to reach a senior advisor to the Secretary of Defense. Visas were soon approved. Meanwhile in Iraq, his liaisons to Ayad's family were killed by a car bomb. He dug up the e-mail of a major with whom he had corresponded and put him on the case. "I told him, 'You're it.'"
Sixteen months after his photo appeared, Ayad not only underwent surgery at a top American hospital, his father was at his side through the ordeal. So were round-the-clock volunteer Arabic interpreters that Easley and his spouse had recruited. "The main thing I learned," says Easley, "is that you must never take 'no' for an answer." Asked why he poured his time and resources into Ayad's cause when so many other innocent Iraqis have been injured, he says: "I don't know about other injured children but I do know about Ayad."
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