Charlie Whitford

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I Hail from a medium size North Carolina, USA town about 30 miles from the great Atlantic ocean. I spent my younger years trying to keep from doing any work. Later during my Junior year of High School I developed a torn retina. During pre-op for this surgery, my blood pressure bottomed and I had a Cardiac Arrest. Weeks later after thinking it was summer because I thought the seagulls were kites, I was released from the hospital. My first home memory was of using a knife to try to eat peas. That started a long process of frustration when I knew I could do something, like tying shoe laces, but not make my fingers work. I went back to school the next September, and few people even knew what had happened.

After graduating from high School, I bummed around for a while and never quite settled down. After a short stint in USN I tried my hand at college level courses, of which I failed the most of them very miserably. I had 3 instructors that could have bent over backwards to help me. One was bearded English professor that instilled in me the love (again) for the Written word and encouraged my writing. Another was a bearded Biology and Chem instructor, that separated me from what I was and a math instructor that taught me how to do Algebra.

As time went on I married and I am still with my wife of 21 years. I have twin boys, age 21,one I live with and one just made me a granddad last year. I now fight a constant battle to continue to see, due to wet macula degeneration. When you have been what I have been through, you fight to keep what you have.