Pete Frates: Fielding ALS With Grit What would you do if you were in a wheelchair for life or needed a feeding tube to survive? What if you knew that you only had two to five years to live? Would you give up or would you fight the challenge? To get through challenges like this people need grit. Grit is boldness, bravery, courage, perseverance and spirit. Star baseball player and center fielder, Pete Frates was diagnosed with ALS. Pete Frates played division one, college baseball, but that’s not what made him famous. It was his fight against ALS that did. After he was diagnosed, he was in a wheelchair and needed a feeding tube to survive. Pete Frates used his grit not only to fight his own daily challenges with ALS, but to help find
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It has been 75 years since Lou Gehrig’s diagnosis and there is still no cure for ALS. Pete's wife started the challenge to raise awareness and it is documented on youtube. She sent a video on facebook to a couple of friends of herself doing the ice bucket challenge. In a week, friends and family were posting videos of themselves taking the ice bucket challenge. The next week the media was catching on and the week after that celebrities were doing the challenge. Then the challenge spread worldwide. Instead of burying his head and living in depression, Pete Frates showed true grit and became the face of ALS to bring awareness and fight to find a cure for future generations. He wasn’t thinking of himself, he was thinking about others battling the same thing as him. After some time, he raised over 220 million dollars and raised a lot of awareness through the the Ice Bucket Challenge. Amy Purdy showed the same kind of grit as Pete when she lost both her legs after she suffered from bacterial meningitis. Through Amy’s TED talk she tells the world her story of losing her legs, her hearing in one ear, her spleen and her kidney and how she managed to persevere. Instead of being depressed in bed when she thought that she could longer snowboard or travel again, she didn’t allow her obstacles to stop her. She researched prosthetic feet to help her snowboard and she went on to win two gold medals in the special olympics. She also co-founded a nonprofit organization to help people with disabilities play sports. Amy overcame her obstacles by using grit to create her own story and she continues to help and inspire
It has been 75 years since Lou Gehrig’s diagnosis and there is still no cure for ALS. Pete's wife started the challenge to raise awareness and it is documented on youtube. She sent a video on facebook to a couple of friends of herself doing the ice bucket challenge. In a week, friends and family were posting videos of themselves taking the ice bucket challenge. The next week the media was catching on and the week after that celebrities were doing the challenge. Then the challenge spread worldwide. Instead of burying his head and living in depression, Pete Frates showed true grit and became the face of ALS to bring awareness and fight to find a cure for future generations. He wasn’t thinking of himself, he was thinking about others battling the same thing as him. After some time, he raised over 220 million dollars and raised a lot of awareness through the the Ice Bucket Challenge. Amy Purdy showed the same kind of grit as Pete when she lost both her legs after she suffered from bacterial meningitis. Through Amy’s TED talk she tells the world her story of losing her legs, her hearing in one ear, her spleen and her kidney and how she managed to persevere. Instead of being depressed in bed when she thought that she could longer snowboard or travel again, she didn’t allow her obstacles to stop her. She researched prosthetic feet to help her snowboard and she went on to win two gold medals in the special olympics. She also co-founded a nonprofit organization to help people with disabilities play sports. Amy overcame her obstacles by using grit to create her own story and she continues to help and inspire