| The fourth in a series In Curt Marsh’s
future was a very successful career as a youth-inspiring motivational speaker.
In his past was a pro football career as an offensive guard for the Raiders from 1981
to ’86. Also in his past were far too many ankle surgeries that had provided all the
long-term solution of an ace bandage on cancer.
In his present was one more surgery. A surgery filled with finality. A surgery that was
not so much a cure as grudging recognition that the fight was over and could not be won.
The calendar read 1994.
His pulse read Indy 500. Final lap.
Marsh was on a gurney at the hospital. There was a smell in the air that he knew all
too well. There was a distinct lighting that was all too familiar. This was like the
moment in a horror film you have seen before when you know something scary is seconds
away, and your heart still can’t stop itself from beating at the same rate as the
sounds that come from a wildly intense bongo player about to overdose on adrenaline.
Indeed, Marsh had seen this horror show before. His senses trembled from the realization
that he was in the hospital. Again.
In his mid-30s, Marsh was shaking like a scared young child.
The same thought kept racing through his working-overtime mind: "I’ve got to
go through with this. I’ve got to go through with this."
After all, a dozen post-football surgeries on his ankle had failed to solve all that
ailed him. Marsh had received a prognosis from his doctor that was equal parts blunt and
disconcerting: "Here’s your choices. There’s nothing else surgically that
we can do. You can either live in a wheelchair or on crutches the rest of your life with
this horrible pain, or we can cut it off and you can get on with your life with a
prosthesis."
Marsh felt sick to his stomach when he heard this. His initial thought was, "No,
that’s not an option."
Over time, Marsh started to consider the inconceivable. Maybe amputation was the way to
go. Maybe it was because his pain, on a scale of one to 10, was constantly hovering around
a nine. Maybe it was because when the remote control was across the room or he was thirsty
or he had go to the bathroom really bad, he’d choose to stay put, choose to avoid
walking at all costs to avoid the intolerable, unrelenting pain. Maybe it was the
tough-love analysis of his doctor: "There’s nothing else surgically that we can
do." Maybe it was the counseling he received from a registered nurse who had a
Master’s in social work and herself was an amputee.
Maybe it was all of the above. Maybe there comes a point that when you keep beating
your head against a brick wall, the only dent you make is on your own head. This wall was
not going to come tumbling down.
So it was that Marsh found himself on a hospital gurney on that 1994 day, hands
shaking, being wheeled to the place where they would cut his leg off, eight inches above
an ankle that long ago should have been recalled like a defective car.
Marsh had prayed. He had made up his mind that amputation was the right decision. And
yet, as the gurney took him increasingly close to the final door he would pass through on
the way to life as an amputee, nervousness turned to panic.
"I don’t know if I can do it," Marsh thought to himself. Filled with
second thoughts and self-doubt, Marsh considered jumping off the gurney in frightened
retreat.
The man who would go on to become such an inspiring motivational speaker that he would
receive hundreds of letters thanking him for his words of wisdom and encouragement was
desperately in need of the self-motivation to bravely stay the course.
Dear Mr. Marsh,
I wanted to write to you and thank you for being an inspiration to me.
I heard you speak at the (2001) NASC conference in Charlotte, N.C. earlier this summer. I
came to you after the speech and I wanted to thank you. However, I was in tears and could
hardly get a word out. Your coordinating associate saw me in tears and gave me a free copy
of your book ("Dare to Dream"). I didn’t get around to reading it until
today. I finished a few minutes ago and it is 1:20 a.m. where I live. You see, today I
have to go see another doctor, and I am very nervous.
When I was born I had a deformity called bilateral club feet. I am not
sure if you are familiar with it. Well, my parents took me to the best doctor in Chicago,
and here I am nine surgeries later. In excruciating pain every day of my life. During one
of my early on surgeries, large staples were placed in my feet to hold bones together. A
week or so ago one came loose. Causing me more pain than usual. That is why I must go to
the doctor. This deformity, disability or whatever it should be referred to as has caused
me more pain than I could ever imagine.
Not only do I experience physical pain, the emotional has taken a
larger toll on my life. Due to the fact that walking causes me pain, many forms of
exercise are out of the picture. Running is something I cannot do. Also, due to my feet
problems I have developed knee complications. Basically, I cannot exercise. When I was
younger I was so fat. I had the braces on my legs and just looked awkward. The teasing and
tormenting took place all through elementary school and junior high. And today, in high
school, I refuse to wear shorts around my peers. I am going to be a junior, and I have
worn pants to school for the past two years. I also don’t take gym because it causes
me too much pain. I do not wear shorts because even today I am ridiculed about the look of
my legs. Due to surgery complications when I was young, my calf muscles are not very
large. When they get too big from too much walking they become sore. I look odd because my
lower leg, below the knee, is probably three or four times smaller than my thigh.
Basically I have had it rough. I now battle depression and fight to have self-esteem.
However, I believe I am losing that one. While crying earlier today, I saw your book under
a pile of books in my room. I remembered how much I appreciated your speech and picked up
the book.
My crying ceased due to you. Obviously I am not 100 percent better,
but your book inspired me. It inspired me to look beyond what I was called when I was
young. It inspired me to look beyond the deformities that lie beyond my waist. It inspired
me to try to look past all that I see as bad and try to look at things as a blessing. I
have learned a few lessons of my own throughout my life. I don’t take much for
granted. At one random doctor’s visit, I think when I was 4, one of my little cousins
had come along. He may have been 3 at the time. Anyway, we were sitting in the waiting
room, it was quite small and you could hear every word anyone spoke, whether or not he or
she was whispering. Well, this little boy was staring at a woman with a mangled leg
sitting across from us, and he began to make mean comments to me about her. I got upset
and said to him, "Richie, everyone has something wrong with them. Some you can see
and others you can’t. How would you feel if you were her and she was teasing
you?" A couple of women overheard and began to cry, telling my mother she was raising
a wonderful daughter. Basically, being young and tied down in casts, I knew then that it
was not worth the effort to make fun of that woman. That is just what she had wrong. And
everyone has something. It is not avoidable.
Thank you again for your words of wisdom. They helped me realize this
pool of self-pity I am swimming in would drown me if I don’t look at the positives of
life. I appreciate all you have done for me and others. I hope your life brings you much
joy and happiness, you deserve it."
Sincerely,
Elizabeth, 17, Illinois
Marsh did not leap off the gurney just before reaching the operating room where a
portion of his leg would be cut off with the same cold precision as a wing being carved
from a Thanksgiving turkey. The tidal wave of panic subsided. It did not knock Marsh off
the gurney and wash him ashore, painful ankle still in place.
Sure, he contemplated shouting, "Stop! I’m out of here."
Somehow he instead gathered the strength to be strong, to stay on the gurney, to go
through with a less-than-perfect solution that was nonetheless the best that life and
modern medicine had to offer.
As a motivational speaker, Marsh likes to mix humor and serious dialogue like a Vegas
blackjack dealer shuffling the cards. This style of speaking is on display when he
explains what it was that kept him on the gurney.
"In my mind’s eye, I saw I still had one of those gowns on with no back in
it, and that caused me to pause enough to get me through the door," Marsh says.
Marsh then turns serious and says, "The reality was I had made a commitment, and I
was going to follow through."
When Marsh, otherwise known as "the king of wishful thinking" by his wife,
awoke from the surgery, he thought to himself, "Maybe they saved it."
Then, through blurry eyes, Marsh saw the stump that was all bandaged up.
"There was the shock of finding out it wasn’t there anymore, and then
that’s when the hard part started," Marsh says.
After 13 post-NFL surgeries on the same limb, that’s when the hard part started?
Crazy but true.
When Marsh saw what his leg looked like after the surgery, there was only a nurse with
him at the time. He started to cry.
"I can honestly say I had never felt those kinds of emotions before, because it
was utter despair," Marsh says. "The only way I can think to describe it is that
it attacked or cut into not only my physical being but basically who I was my entire life
as an athlete. You come to grips that that’s not what you are anymore because I
couldn’t walk if I wanted to. … I couldn’t get up and even walk.
"And a lot of athletes have this problem just with retiring, but it strikes at
your identity. And when you’re not an athlete anymore, you’re an ex-athlete. I
had been Curt Marsh the football player all my life. And then I was Curt Marsh the
ex-football player. (I) wanted to play basketball with my kids and stuff, and that was one
of my motivating factors all the time going through all my surgeries was I wanted to get
to the point where I could do those things that I had dreamed of doing with my children
and that was being an athlete with them. Playing softball and teaching them how to play
basketball and do all those things that I was limited from doing because either I had a
cast on my leg or it was broken again. And there was a finality to that hope that some day
I would be able to get back to who I’d been all my life. And I think the despair came
from that. That and the fact that … will my wife find me attractive? Those kinds of
things that cut to the core of your own selfish pride, as well."
As if it wasn’t hard enough to deal with these emotional issues, Marsh still had
to deal with more physical pain as well. The medical staff had cut his leg off, and the
previous pain still existed. That’s like a burglar completely cleaning out your home
and then having the audacity to send you the bill for the moving van.
After the surgery, Marsh still felt shooting pain where his amputated foot and ankle
used to be. Phantom pain is what it is called.
"Talk about frustrating," Marsh says. "You’re laying there and you
can’t go to sleep because of these pains that are shooting down and you’re
thinking, ‘Wait a minute. I cut this thing off, and it still hurts?’ "
During that first week after amputation, the man who would become a motivational
speaker was not feeling terribly motivated or full of uplifting thoughts.
"I was still spiraling down that well of despair," Marsh says.
Then he got all bent out of shape about a pair of balloons, and his outlook on life
changed forever for the better. In some ways, those two balloons did more for Marsh than
an army of surgeons, psychologists and social workers ever could have hoped to accomplish.
Those two balloons had more healing power than a fully stocked pharmacy.
Initially, however, those two balloons just about drove Marsh
get-the-men-in-white-coats crazy. Those metallic-colored balloons kept bumping against the
ceiling. The nurses probably didn’t hear a sound. The doctors most likely heard
nothing. Marsh, annoyed at the world, heard the sounds of machine guns, fireworks and
pneumatic drills every time the balloons nudged against the ceiling.
Marsh describes the incessant sounds of the balloons as being "like water dripping
on your forehead like a Chinese water torture."
It was more than the noise, though. It was the way the balloons were laughing at Marsh.
The way they smirked. The way they mocked. Balloons don’t possess such cruel human
qualities, you say? Don’t tell that to Marsh.
"The other thing that annoyed me is there was absolutely nothing I could do to
move the balloons," Marsh says. "That was pissing me off. I just wanted them
out. It was like they were taunting me, saying, ‘I’m over here making this
noise, and you can’t do anything about it.’ So for all those reasons, those
little balloons became very powerful."
Marsh chuckles at the recollection, but he wasn’t amused at the time.
Marsh told his wife to get rid of the balloons. Aware that the balloons had come from
someone who loved her husband, and also determined to get Curt into a wheelchair and out
of his hospital room, she said they should give them to someone who would appreciate them.
They argued. Curt said, "I don’t care who you give them to. Just get them out of
here." His wife countered with, "No, we’re going to do this."
Curt lost this battle and in so doing won the war.
He got in his wheelchair, and he, his wife and the balloons went into the elevator to
go to another floor of the hospital. The elevator door closed. The elevator started to
climb. The elevator stopped. The elevator door opened, and Curt immediately heard
something that upset him.
It was the boisterous laughter of a child coming from the other end of the hallway.
Curt thought a mother had brought her child to visit and was letting him run around.
"I was in pain," Marsh says. "I actually made a mental note that I was
going to find this child and his mother and say, ‘You know, this is a hospital and
you need to calm down and be more thoughtful of other people who are suffering here.’
"
After getting out of the elevator, Marsh’s wife wheeled him to a nurse’s
station and asked the nurse on duty who would want the balloons. The nurse pointed behind
her to a child who was on the telephone.
Marsh did a double take upon seeing the young child. The 10-year-old was in the
hospital because of the terrible burns he had suffered.
"The scarring was unbelievable," Marsh says. "He didn’t look
human."
The young man had a nylon material over his head. One eyelid was half gone. The other
one was all gone. There were two holes where his nose used to be. His mouth was, in the
words of Marsh, "monstrous looking." There were no lips, just gums and teeth,
Scarring was everywhere.
"It was one of the most horrendous sights I saw," Marsh says.
Marsh’s mouth was hanging open in stunned disbelief, when the young man did
something that shocked the former football player in an altogether different way.
"This kid is on the phone, and he starts freaking giggling again and laughing, and
honest to God that laughter my wife and I had heard coming off the elevator was coming
from him," Marsh says. "I was blown away. And I looked at the kid, and I looked
at myself. And I remember in my mind thinking, ‘Curt, there is nothing wrong with
you. Get your s--- together."
When the young burn victim finally got off the phone, he was told that someone had left
a pair of balloons for him.
This didn’t mark the last time Marsh ever felt sorry for himself. But it was the
last time he ever felt sorry for himself for any lengthy period of time. From that day
forward, every time Marsh started feeling pity for himself for any length of time, he
would think of the young burn victim.
"No matter what we go through, you don’t have to look far to find someone a
little worse off than you are, and they’re finding a way to deal with it," Marsh
says. "How amazing that experience was, meeting that child."
Dear Mr. Marsh,
Thank you so much for coming and speaking at Travis Ranch Middle School. I know for
a fact that everyone thought you were so cool! I enjoyed it very much. I’m glad that
you have the courage to go around to different schools and speak about your experience
even though it takes time away from your family and like you said is a sensitive subject
for you to talk about and show others.
You showed me a whole new meaning to life. … Although what I recently went
through is nothing compared to your experience, it made me take another look. I hurt my
knee playing basketball, and after the first week of resting I said, "Okay, I’m
ready to play." My parents and physical therapist said no way, and they were right. I
had an MRI done and luckily nothing was torn, just a very bad sprain and fluid on my knee.
I still had to take three more weeks off, and during that time I was so depressed. Now I
realize that I’ve been foolish. I’m now just getting back in the swing of
things, and it feels so good there isn’t a word to describe it. Thank you for opening
my eyes. You don’t know how much your speech meant to me. There is so much in life to
be grateful for.
Thank you again, and I hope all goes well for you.
Kristen Paz, Yorba Linda, CA
The previous letter writer learned to balance a love of sports and how much there is in
life to be grateful for from one of Marsh’s speeches. Marsh had the opportunity to
balance the two at the 1995 Wheelchair and Amputee National Championships in Boston.
When Marsh first became an amputee, he had no idea such a competition existed. The
light bulb first flickered on when he was at Cornerstone Prosthetics, which is pretty much
what it sounds like — a place where amputees go for a prosthesis. While he was there,
Marsh was looking at some magazines that had articles about people like himself competing
in sports. He asked some questions, got some answers and thought to himself, "My
gosh, that would be a good way to set a goal to move forward with this."
He hit the weight room with an eye on competing in the weightlifting event after it
became apparent that having part of his power leg amputated, along with hip problems he
had, was going to make it too difficult to compete in the discus and shot put.
At the 1995 Wheelchair and Amputee National Championships, Marsh competed in the
heavyweight class. Actually, he did more than compete. He excelled. He won the gold medal
in his weight class.
He was pleased, but not ecstatic like he would feel during his football career when
success was shared as a team. He had gone to the Wheelchair and Amputee National
Championships on his own, so there was no one to pour champagne on in a victorious locker
room. The thoughts running through his mind were, "Good, I did that. I’m proud
of myself. Now I can move on and just get on with life."
He had something to prove to himself, and he had done just that.
The greater memory from the Wheelchair and Amputee National Championships may very well
have been that of a lesson learned rather than a title won. The lesson was to be grateful
for what life has given you rather than bitter about what it has taken away.
It was a lesson Marsh learned from his roommate, Chuck, at the Wheelchair and Amputee
National Championships.
Chuck was a paraplegic. He came to find himself in that situation because of a previous
roommate who owned a gun. The roommate said he would never keep it loaded. One day Chuck
opened up a drawer that contained the gun. The gun somehow went off accidentally and shot
Chuck through the spine.
Chuck took the glass-is-half-full approach to life. He kept telling Marsh at the
Wheelchair and Amputee National Championships how lucky he felt to have lived.
"I kept thinking how pissed off I’d be at my roommate," Marsh says.
"And I’m sure he went through that, but that’s not where his focus was. His
focus was on how he was doing now, where he was going. It just was amazing how many people
there felt that same way. And there were people there that were in rough shape."
Marsh heard their message loud and clear. He would apply it to his own situation. He
would apply it to his future career as a motivational speaker.
"The lesson I learned from (Chuck) was more about forgiveness and moving on with
his life," Marsh says. "He decided he was going to make the best of it.
That’s what I got out of him."
Dear Curt Marsh,
NASC was a wonderful conference. I have to say one of the best lifetime experiences
I have ever had. I met many new and wonderful lifetime friends, and I also became a better
person. Wow, your presentation was amazing. It really touched me in a way I never felt
before. I really appreciate the concepts you believe in that you shared with us. I feel
what you shared with us all in the presentation touched my heart in a way that it will
stick with me forever, and I hope I can carry it all with me so well I can share it with
people I love, people I don’t love and, most important, people who need it just as
much as I needed it. Thank you friend!
Sincerely,
Tracy Laramille
Marsh learned tremendously important lessons from the young burn victim at the hospital
and from Chuck, his roommate at the Wheelchair and Amputee National Championships. If he
is in their debt as a result, Marsh has more than repaid it many times over through his
work as a motivational speaker.
With his words, Marsh has more impact than dynamite at a demolition site. With his
words, Marsh is more powerful than he ever was on a football field.
Last year, Marsh gave one of his speeches to a group of youngsters. Before the speech,
Jack Ziegler — a science teacher at Douglass Junior High in Woodland, Calif., as well
as the person in charge of the summer leadership camp program for the California
Association of Directors of Activities — arranged for Marsh to talk to a young man
named Erik. Erik was in the eighth grade at the time. Ziegler says Erik has multiple
sclerosis and has also had to overcome other obstacles in his life.
Erik’s job was to introduce Marsh when he gave his speech. Ziegler told Erik that
he should sit down with Marsh and talk so the introduction would not sound like it came
straight from a résumé. One suspects that Ziegler had other loftier motives as well.
If he did, he certainly succeeded. Marsh made an enormous impression on Erik.
"Curt made a real difference in Erik’s life," Ziegler says. "I
mean, Erik still talks about Curt’s book, and is Curt going to come back and talk to
us again this year? Curt spent a lot of time with him and kind of kidded around with him.
He talked to him on Erik’s level. He recognized him as a person, not somebody who was
bound in a wheelchair."
On another occasion, Marsh was giving a speech to a school, and he noticed an
overweight girl who the other kids weren’t letting sit with them. She was not one of
the beautiful people, and everyone around her seemed intent on letting her know that very
fact that day. Finally, she meandered off to the side and pretended that she was sitting
down.
"It broke my heart. Just broke my heart," Marsh says.
He did not sit there quietly broken-hearted. He did something. Something wonderful.
Marsh went up to the heavy-set girl and told her she was beautiful. Told her she had a
beautiful smile. He made her day. Her week. Probably her year.
It is something he probably would not have thought to do before he became an amputee.
"Probably not," Marsh says. "I probably wouldn’t have noticed.
… I am supersensitive to that stuff now."
Being an amputee has done more than make Marsh more sensitive to others. It has made
him a more effective motivational speaker. While he has a gift for speaking, having an
amputated leg gets him listened to far more than if he were simply a former NFL offensive
lineman.
"Oh, yeah, it’s a great prop. Yeah, I recommend it for anyone who’s
going into motivational speaking. Have a piece of your body cut off," says Marsh,
laughing and displaying the sense of humor that is so effective when he speaks to an
audience. "But to tell you the truth, there are two things. One: My message is
stronger because of what I’ve learned. So yes, I am more effective. And two is just
the visual itself, especially when I’m in a room full of kids. … I tell them,
‘I have a chair up here, and the reason this chair is up here is you heard in the
introduction that I had an amputation, and before I get going, if I have time, sometimes I
can take my leg off and show (it). But I want to know how many people are interested in
seeing that?’ And then the kids raise their hand, and then I go, ‘Oh, you all
are sick. You are a sick group.’ And then I say, ‘Well, so am I, so we’re
going to get along well.’ So then they know that’s coming. So yeah, it helps.
And then at the end I do take it off, and I show it to them, and it’s an incredible
visual."
Although Marsh usually saves this visual for the kids, he has been known to unleash it
on adults with powerful results. A few years ago, the NFL Players Association asked Marsh
to testify at a California Senate committee meeting. Up for discussion was a proposal to
scale back workman’s compensation protection in California for pro athletes.
At one point during the day that Marsh testified, one of the senators complained that
he was tired of professional athletes saying how much they suffer from injuries that the
state of California was having to pay for as a result. Then, as Marsh remembers it, the
senator said that many of the athletes were faking injuries to get money.
Furious, Marsh reached down, pulled his leg off, slammed it on the table and told the
senator and everyone else in attendance, "You couldn’t give me enough money to
make these kinds of injuries worth my while. This is definitely not faking it. These
injuries are real, and we have to live with these things the rest of our lives."
Curt Marsh knows how to make a point with his fake leg.
The fact of the matter is, however, that Marsh knows how to make a point even if he
never took his leg off for the visual statement it makes.
Marsh prefers to talk to kids. He’s done some corporate motivational speaking, but
his heart isn’t in it. Talking to kids is what makes him tick. He is someone who
definitely connects with this younger audience.
He is big on telling kids that their potential is incredible and that they can do
amazing things. He is big on telling kids to find something they are passionate about and
to spend their life doing it, promising them, "You can be pretty happy doing whatever
you’re doing if you love it." He is big on telling kids to work hard. He is big
on telling kids to treat other people the right way.
Combine these positive messages with great story-telling ability, a genuine quality
about him, a perfect mix of humor and serious talk, his own life experiences and a
take-off-your-leg, bring-down-the-curtain showstopper and you’ve got a pretty dynamic
speaker.
The first time Ziegler hired Marsh to speak to one of his groups, he was fretting
before Marsh began whether he had made a mistake.
"I didn’t know if I’d hired a dumb jock with a canned speech,"
Ziegler says. "And boy, when he gave that first talk with the kids at the first camp,
10 minutes into the speech I go, ‘Bingo! I think I did it right.’ "
Ed Bailey, Marsh’s partner at Curt Marsh and Associates, says, "I think he
has a real gift working with kids. Alternative school kids, kids that have a lot of
difficulties to honor-society kids. He relates well to all groups. Kids that are dealing
with adversity in their lives, facing obstacles, divorce in their family, drugs and
alcohol, they can sort of look at him and say, hey, here’s a guy who’s faced a
ton of adversity and come out of it with a pretty positive attitude about what life has to
offer, and there are dreams out there and continue to pursue your dreams."
Nova Gattman, from the Office of University Residences at Western Washington University
wrote the following paragraph in a letter after hearing Marsh speak: "When I heard
about Curt Marsh from one of the conference chairs, I thought he sounded like a good
speaker. How misinformed I was. I have attended 10 different conferences in my university
experience, each with at least one speaker, and never have I been so moved by a conference
speaker. Curt Marsh was simply amazing. I alternated between laughing, crying and thinking
very deeply on aspects of my life while he spoke. I certainly hope I will have the
opportunity to hear him speak again. I strongly recommend him as a speaker for any event.
I want every person to have the same experience I had when I heard Curt speak. He’s
an incredible individual with a message that will change lives."
Hi Curt,
Thank you for an exceptional presentation at our school. I wanted to share some
student comments:
"Really great … Inspirational … Jokes were extremely funny …
Good speaker … His personal story was touching … He was cool … He was
really great and funny … He was awesome … Hope he comes back next year."
A parent came to the school to ask for your e-mail because her son and daughter
raved about you at the dinner table that evening. She thanked me for asking you to be part
of our assembly program.
Our school never has arranged for the same speaker two years in a row. We are now
going to make an exception and invite you to return next school year.
During your presentation I saw students and adults experience a variety of
emotions. It is amazing how one person can touch the lives of so many people.
Thanks again and see you next year.
Sincerely,
Chris Berney
Vice Principal
Hopkins JHS
You might think that Marsh would do just about anything to get his amputated leg back
in good working order. Yes, he’d like the leg back. No, he wouldn’t do so at any
cost. In particular, he says he wouldn’t want the leg back if it meant losing the
life lessons he has learned as a result of this physical ordeal.
"No matter what choices you make good or bad, or what kind of person you are,
you’re going to go through things that just really hurt," Marsh says.
"There’s going to be episodes in our lives that completely suck, and regardless
of what we do, we’re going to have to experience that people die, … you end up
having your leg cut off, diseases happen. And going through this and having to feel that
kind of pain physically and emotionally mostly helped me realize that life is not about
what happens to us but how we deal with those things that happen to us. So when I see
tragedies, I’m more likely to dwell on what the response to that tragedy is going to
be rather than to dwell on the tragedy itself. I think that’s a trait that will help
me through life, and I hope to pass on to other people to let them know that too, because
it helps you get by.
"And the second thing is that you don’t have to look very far to find someone
a little worse off than you are, and that kid in the hospital taught me that. … So no
matter what happens to me or my loved ones from here on out, I’ve got that
encouragement to know that it’s not something that somebody hasn’t had to deal
with and hasn’t conquered or gotten over. It still sucks and it hurts, but we can
find a way to deal with it.
"And thirdly is the realization that who I am really is not based on this skin
suit that I wear. My body. Because I realize that those who really know me and love me see
me for who I am and not what I am. And it really has challenged me, and this has really
changed how I see people. This isn’t just some motivational mumbo jumbo. It’s
the truth. It’s challenged me to look at people differently, and especially when
I’m dealing with kids.
"Any human being if you really take the time to get to know them, it all comes
down to the same basic things: we want to be respected; we want to be treated fairly; we
want to be loved; we want to find someone else to love. There are some basic needs that we
all have that are really the core of who we are. And my belief is it’s that soul
that’ll live somewhere forever. If you can see that part of a human being and forget
the color of the skin, whether they’re fat like that little girl, whether their face
is burnt like that kid, there’s so many people that live a life that nobody gets to
know them because they can’t get past the outside. And those people are so valuable
and so incredible, and we’re cheating ourselves for not appreciating that in every
human being we see. And when we do that, if you’re able to look at someone in that
way, I challenge you not to care about them. And living a life that cares more about
people every day is really a rewarding life."
This is the lesson life’s obstacles have taught Marsh. This is the
message he tries to convey as a motivational speaker. He gives about 50-60 speeches a
year. He has spoken in 18 different states and has set a goal of speaking in all 50 states
before all is said and done.
Even though he previously was an NFL football player who played on some
extremely successful teams in front of huge cheering crowds, Marsh says his time spent as
a motivational speaker "is much more rewarding than anything I’ve ever done.
… I think it’s because I’m older, and I recognize that success is more than
status and money. Trust me, I like both. But like in football, good was never good enough.
You were always pushing yourself. That’s one of those things that gets you to that
level is that you’re never satisfied. And I still haven’t given my best speech
yet, but I feel like there’s more than just the pressure to perform here.
There’s a pressure to make a difference in people’s lives."
As a member of the Raiders, Marsh’s goals excluded everybody but
his teammates. As a motivational speaker, Marsh ’s goals are shared with a much
bigger team.
Just how big is that team?
"Everybody I can see," Marsh says.
Hi Curt,
My name is Caitlin. I am 13 years old and in grade seven. You probably
don’t remember me, but I was one of the students in the front row at KLO middle
school in Kelowna BC. It might help if I say I was the one that talked to you after you
finished your interview with CHBC. It’s OK if you don’t remember, because you
probably talk to a lot of kids.
I found your speech inspiring in many ways. I like the humor. I hate
having people come to our school and giving boring speeches. I was just surprised that you
came from California to Canada to talk to us. It shows that you really care.
Your stories and advice helped me figure problems out that I’ve
been struggling with, and it also shows that my problems are nothing compared to half the
stuff out there. Four years ago my mom had cancer and in November was re-diagnosed with
breast cancer. She lost her hair from the treatment, and I felt lost and was thinking my
life isn’t fair and it always happens to me. But your speech made me think. It
wasn’t even happening to me, and I was the one who was crying and had no faith, while
my mom was the one who had cancer and was the survivor.
I was always thinking, what happens if when I grow up and get cancer,
oh my goodness, what will I do? It hasn’t happened yet, and you gave me faith to
believe that it won’t happen, and that if it does I can get through it.
When you were first taking off your leg to show us, I was scared not
knowing what to expect, but you didn’t take it serious. You just let loose and showed
the humor in it instead of the downside. But there really isn’t any downside because
you can still do stuff without being held back.
Toodles,
Caitlin
For more information on Curt Marsh and the motivational work that he
does, visit www.curtmarsh.com
Back to main series index |
