Marla Runyan and Her Blind Life “I want to be remembered as someone who never gave up,” Marla Runyan said in her book No Finish Line: My Life as I See It (Abbey 104). Runyan is a legally blind Olympic runner, although she was born with the ability to see (90). Being blind, though, did not stop her from making her dreams come true. Although blindness is different for everyone, it is a simple disease. The definition of blindness is merely a high degree of vision loss (Bender 8). About 285 million people in the world are visually impaired, and there are thirty-nine million people who are legally blind in the world (“Facts About Blindness”). About ten million people in America are visually impaired, and 1.3 million of those people are legally blind (“Blindness”). A person can be born blind, become blind in the early stages of childhood, get an illness that causes blindness, get in an accident, or can lose their sight from old age (Bender 10). In order to get their sight back, the
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She once stated, “If I break a national record, maybe they will stop writing about my eyes.” (LaFontaine 288). She showed people that even though they are blind, they do not have to stop doing what they love. Runyan loves to compete in track and field events, and she did not stop just because she was blind. After contracting Stargardt’s, she also showed people that it is possible to live a normal life, even with blindness (Abbey 92). To sum up, Mary Runyan is an Olympic runner who never gave up on her dream, even when she was diagnosed with Stargardt’s Disease and became legally blind. She wanted people to remember her, not because she was a blind runner, but because she was a runner who put forward her best effort into every task she did. Runyan is a perfect paradigm for showing people that they can do anything the put their mind to.
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She once stated, “If I break a national record, maybe they will stop writing about my eyes.” (LaFontaine 288). She showed people that even though they are blind, they do not have to stop doing what they love. Runyan loves to compete in track and field events, and she did not stop just because she was blind. After contracting Stargardt’s, she also showed people that it is possible to live a normal life, even with blindness (Abbey 92). To sum up, Mary Runyan is an Olympic runner who never gave up on her dream, even when she was diagnosed with Stargardt’s Disease and became legally blind. She wanted people to remember her, not because she was a blind runner, but because she was a runner who put forward her best effort into every task she did. Runyan is a perfect paradigm for showing people that they can do anything the put their mind to.
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