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Greg Sells

Thanksgiving is more than just a holiday for Greg Sells.

Giving thanks is a lifelong process for the Fort Dodge native – giving thanks to family and friends who lifted him from the depths and helped him to a life well lived after he was involved in a tragic auto accident 50 years ago.

Sells was a passenger in a car driven by a fellow University of Iowa student on Oct. 7, 1966, that veered off a Dubuque street, killing the driver and leaving the four-sport athlete at St. Edmond High School paralyzed from the chest down and confined to a wheelchair.

“From that day forward my life would never be the same. And yet today I live a happy, interesting and fulfilling life,” he said. “The reason for the happy ending, and I’m convinced of this, is because of the love and support of my family and my very good friends in and of Fort Dodge.”

Sells remembers Thanksgiving Day 1966 – six weeks after the accident – when he was undergoing treatment at Younkers Rehabilitation Center in Des Moines and his father, Lyle Sells, had picked a nearby restaurant for Thanksgiving dinner.

“It was the first time I was allowed to leave the hospital – for a few hours,” Sells recalled. “I was young (20 years old) and very self-conscious about being in a wheelchair and wanted to go somewhere where I could ‘hide’ from the general public.

“When we got there we found out the dining area was in the lower level only served by a long flight of stairs. I had to be carried down and back up with what seemed like everybody staring at me. In addition, it was packed with people and was a buffet-style meal. Somebody had to get the food for me. A worse spot could not have been selected. We were all naive about functioning in the wheelchair in the beginning. Later we laughed about it … I still laugh about it.”

Today, Sells is winding down a career in Sacramento, California, where since 1983 he and his brother Tim have operated Sells and Associates Inc., which provides services to injured workers and consultation on legal matters involving personal injury, medical malpractice and employment discrimination matters.

Sells moved to California after graduate school at the University of Arizona, working initially at a medical rehabilitation center in Fresno. He became active in advocacy issues for the disabled, taught two courses in vocational rehabilitation at Fresno State and was appointed by Govs. Ronald Reagan and Jerry Brown to a state board dealing with issues of employment for the disabled.

His job initially involved considerable travel – and he logged many miles in a car equipped with hand controls, with his wheelchair in the back seat, and a dozen airline flights each year.

It was in Sacramento that he met his wife Barbara – “the woman of my dreams” and his stepson Marcel, and later a daughter-in-law, Beth, and two grandchildren, Nya, 5, and Nash, 3, who live in Eden Prairie, a suburb of Minneapolis. Greg and Barbara have been married since 1990 and live in Carmichael, just north of Sacramento.

Sells’ story is one of resilience, determination and the will to succeed. From the start, it was not an easy journey.

Athletics were always a big part of his life and that of his family. His father played football and wrestled at Fort Dodge Senior High, won a national high school wrestling championship and also played football at Cornell College. His brother Boake was a first-team all-state football player at FDSH and attended Iowa on a football scholarship. His brother Tim played football at FDSH.

Greg was a 6-foot-2, 190-pound quarterback at St. Edmond, played forward on the basketball team, qualified for four different events at the state track championship, and was a third baseman and pitcher on the baseball team. In his earlier years, he played for Jerry Patterson’s Fort Dodge Demons baseball team.

After the accident, he spent nine months learning to live “with this new/different body,” motivated by the goal to return to classes at the University of Iowa. “By doing so,” he said, “I would prove to myself, and others, that this accident was simply a speed bump in my life and not an insurmountable obstacle.”

At the time, however, there were no accessibility laws – no ramps or curb cuts, no accessible bathrooms or public transportation, no schools or places of employment that were designed with accessibility in mind. “I was scared about returning to the university. But then something wonderful happened. Two childhood friends in Fort Dodge (Paul Wright and Paul Stevens) asked me if I wanted to share an apartment with them in Iowa City. I was thrilled because I would not have to take on returning to school all alone. But again, naively, I had failed to recognize that the campus was primarily built on the side of a hill and the classroom buildings were filled with stairs.”

Within two weeks, Sells realized that he could not continue and he felt like a failure, with a future that was bleak. “I clearly recall lying in bed and having, for the only time in my life, what psychologists call suicidal ideation. For that moment I felt I was a failure, I had no idea how I would function in an inaccessible world, and I felt alone and worthless. But again, a wonderful thing happened. The two Pauls didn’t make me feel like a failure and in fact made me feel welcomed and encouraged me to stay in Iowa City a while longer before heading back to my parents in Fort Dodge. I credit that time, and those two friends, for helping me get started in the direction that leads me to today.”

In November 1967, he returned home to Fort Dodge where his parents, Lyle and Louise Sells, “certainly didn’t make me feel like a failure. In fact, they simply said to me – well, what should we do next? They always gave me the feeling that I had support and there was a positive future ahead for me. Like many families in Fort Dodge, I’m sure, we were taught that life isn’t what happens to you but rather it is what you make of it. That has been a guiding principle for me for the last 50 years.”

Paging through an Easter Seals Society book on colleges equipped for people with disabilities, he came across Kansas State Teachers College in Emporia, Kansas – one of a handful of colleges that voluntarily made their campus accessible for disabled students. There, he resumed his education, admitted on academic probation because of poor grades at Iowa but graduating two years later with honors. Sells then earned a scholarship to the University of Arizona and completed a master’s degree in vocational rehabilitation counseling.

The lessons he learned along the way?

“In my almost 45 years of working with people with significant physical disabilities, I have heard time and again – when something like this happens to you, you find out who your friends are. That is code that means, somewhat understandably, your friends tend to drift away over time. But not my friends. My friends rallied around me. Steve Dapper, Frank Kopish, Frank Morse, (the late) Larry Hood, Dudley Joselyn Bednar, (the late) John Bednar, Paul Wright, Paul Stevens and Mark McCarville. These friends were with me then and that friendship has continued to the present day. And it has only been enhanced by reconnecting with other Fort Dodge friends – John Anderson, Mick Flaherty, Doug Goodrich, Joe Culver and Pat O’Brien.

“I would be less than honest with myself if I didn’t admit that there have been a number of low times in the last 50 years. But those moments have become rare and fleeting and I attribute that to the incredible love, support and encouragement of my parents, my brothers Boake and Tim, and my late sister Jo Sells Freer, the invaluable presence, then and now, of my childhood friends and most especially my wife Barbara, my stepson Marcel and his family who have made me happier than any time in my life. I am truly a lucky man.

“l still consider myself a Fort Dodger, I just live a little ways outside the city limits.”

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