When Paul Stuart Wichansky was a boy growing up in New Jersey, he wanted to play sports like his friends.
One problem: Wichansky was born with cerebral palsy, which affected his motor skills and left him unable to even stand up for very long.
But Wichansky found a solution.
"What sport could I play where I don't need to run?" he asked a group of elementary and middle school students at the Pe Ell school gym Friday morning. "That's right, I could be a soccer goalie."
Wichansky wound up on a good team, so, as he said, he spent most of the game waving at his parents in the crowd as his teammates attacked the opposite goal. After one game, his coach approached him with a stern look on his face, and Wichansky said he was afraid he was in trouble for his inattentiveness during the game.
But the coach's frown turned into a grin, and he handed the young goalie a trophy. Wichansky was confused until the coach clued him in.
"Paul, that is exactly why you're getting the trophy. I've never seen you stand up for so long," the coach told Wichansky.
"Inside, I felt a surge of pride," Wichansky told the crowd. "I realized that my dream of walking was one step closer."
Today, Wichansky, now 34 years old, can both stand and walk. He spoke to students from Boistfort and Pe Ell Friday morning for about 45 minutes about overcoming his disability, following his dreams and not teasing others because of their differences.
He traveled to Adna in the afternoon, and he'll have given his presentation to 12 schools in Lewis County before he leaves this weekend.
Wichansky works for an A Vision in Motion, a national bureau of motivational speakers. He came to Washington at the behest of Becky Turnbull, director of the Lewis County special education co-op, who discovered Wichansky via an Internet search.
Turnbull said her parent advisory council had requested she promote disability awareness, which led her to look for a speaker.
The funding came from a federal grant from the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Turnbull said.
Wichansky, who walks with a slight gait and speaks in a muffled voice because he has hearing problems, told the children about achieving some of his dreams, such as skydiving, meeting his idol, rock singer Billy Joel, and appearing on CBS as a weather forecaster when he was a teenager.
He told a story of hardship, about how he fell in the grocery store once and his father chose not to help him up so he'd do it on his own.
"If you fall down and your family and friends are there to help you up every time, you can never get up on your own," Wichansky said.
But most importantly, Wichansky told the children to remain positive and infect other people with joy.
"There's no better feeling in the world than making someone else smile," he said.
At least one of the pupils at Pe Ell took his words to heart.
Celesta Olson, a seventh-grader at Boistfort Schools, said Wichansky's story about how his father encouraged him was the best part of the presentation.
Paralyzed from the waist down by spina bifida, a congenital disease affecting the spinal cord, Olson moves around in a wheelchair, and she could relate to Wichansky's tale. In fact, she said he inspired her enough that she wants to imitate him.
"I want to be a motivational speaker just like him," Olson said. "He's cool, and he showed me I shouldn't be ashamed."
