Who Says There Are No Heroes Anymore?

BY: Michael A. Aun, FIC, LUTCF, CSP, CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame

One of the real joys of being privileged enough to be on the speaker's circuit is that you meet some genuine heroes. One such hero was a guy named Peter Strudnick.

Talk about a guy that did not know what the word "quit" means. I joined Strudnick back in the late seventies on a platform in Dallas before the Sales & Marketing Executives. Peter Strudnick was a marathon runner. Big deal, you say. So are a lot of other people. Perhaps it is no big deal to run the marathon, a grueling 26 mile, 385 yard endurance race that requires the participant to be in supreme physical condition.

Each year during the peak of his career, Strudnick ran 30 marathons per year. Again, one could say… no big deal. In fact, my own sister-in-law, Janet Thiel, who was a member of the Cool-Max Marathon Team many years ago, still runs a number of marathons each year while also maintaining a full time job as an executive, a wife and mother of two. Most marathon runners compete in two or three per month in addition to their routine of regular training. It is part of the way they train for the big ones like Boston and New York.

Even during his forties and fifties, Strudnick was still running 30 grueling marathons per year. Again, you could say that many run marathons into their fifties, sixties and seventies- both men and women. What then makes Peter Strudnick so unusual?

When Peter was born, he had a severe birth defect. Again, there are literally hundreds of marathon runners that compete today that were born with birth defects. But there is only marathon runner in the world that competed with a special kind of birth defect- Peter Strudnick had.

What's so unusual about Peter Strudnick? He was born without feet. And now you know the rest of the story.