PROFF POSITIVE: Book Chronicles an Unlikely Success Story
Posted on: Tuesday, 17 October 2006, 06:00 CDT
By Mark Agee, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas
Oct. 17--Joni McDoniel wrote a letter to her relatives telling them of the man she was going to marry.
"Chet doesn't let anything get in the way of what he wants to do," she wrote. "We both understand that our marriage will be more difficult than most, but I feel it would be even more difficult for us to not be together."
That letter came after a lot of soul-searching by the couple. Chet McDoniel was born with no arms and deformed legs. Fearful that Joni would regret marrying someone with his limitations, Chet said he "grilled her pretty hard" before their wedding last year.
"I never thought any woman would see me," he said. "I kept asking her, 'Are you sure you want to do this?' She just told me to quit it."
Chet's marriage -- the answer to his prayers, he says -- highlights a life lived largely in a motorized chair that he steers with his feet. The chair and a positive attitude have taken him to the University of North Texas in Denton, where he graduated with honors, and to a successful career in technology. He has also recorded an album with a gospel group, and he is so good at video games that while growing up his cousin called him Superfoot.
His father, the Rev. Jim McDoniel, jokes that one of the few things his son can't do is "get something down off of a high shelf."
"It all goes back to Christianity," said Chet McDoniel, 26, of Keller. "Out of that came an important belief that it's not important why. It's something I'll ask when I get there."
Chet's story is told in All He Needs for Heaven, a book written by his father, the pastor of Legacy Church of Christ in North Richland Hills. The book was published this year by a Christian organization called Does God Exist?
"Chet is such a positive, happy adult that people ask, 'How did you do that?'" Jim McDoniel said. "Generally, we say that we don't know."
Difficult beginning
Jim and Judy McDoniel already had two children, Randy and Jennie, when Chet was born with congenital birth defects. The book details the "pain and disappointment we felt at the birth of a handicapped child," the introduction reads.
The book, Jim McDoniel said, is meant to reassure people who are trying to reconcile struggles with their faith; even as a minister, his own faith was strained after Chet's birth.
"I had to go back and study some things," Jim McDoniel said. "I learned that God doesn't send what happens to us. He helps us through what happens to us.
"There were times we stood next to his bed and cried, but then we realized that did no good for anyone. But then my wife decided that he needs what every baby needs: he needs love and his diaper changed. And we would deal with the rest as it came.
"If we had known Chet would do so well, it would have made the beginning a lot easier."
Chet rejected prosthetics because he found them uncomfortable and embarrassing, his father said. Still, he played the drums at Trinity High School. His mother, a teacher, used to brag on his "hand"-writing to her fifth-grade students.
As specialists taught him to use his feet, computers were a way to put them to work.
"They've always been just like you would use your hands," Chet said. Typing was also easier on his ankle than writing. "Teachers would tell us we had to type something, and the class would groan. I would smile."
School was sometimes tough because of teasing -- he once challenged a classmate to a lunchroom fight if the other guy would agree not to use his arms. But Chet said he often found solace at his father's church.
"A lot of times what I face is an open jaw or a stare, but the church was always a much more open place," he said. "I never felt excluded."
There, he learned to sing. He has formed two incarnations of the gospel singing group Hessed -- a Hebrew word meaning compassion, kindness and mercy -- and recorded an album that includes a song he wrote, Up to You.
Chet graduated magna cum laude from UNT in 2002 with a degree in radio, television and film and is now director of sales and technology for an online travel agency. He drives a specially equipped van.
He is also a member at Richland Hills Church of Christ and sings in the choir, as he did at Legacy.
"Anytime Chet leads singing, the audience sings better," Jim McDoniel said.
"Once a lady, who didn't know Chet was my son, told me: 'I didn't feel like coming to church today. But when I saw that man up there without arms leading singing and was so happy, I was overjoyed,'" McDoniel said. "I said, 'That's my son!'"
Staying positive
Chet said his religion has helped him stay positive.
"Who wants to hang around someone who is unhappy all the time? What employer, what girl, what friends want to be around a guy who is always 'poor me?'" he said.
"A lot of people think the world owes them something. All the world owes me is courtesy and respect."
Church was also where he met Joni. They said they considered each other best friends for years before they began dating.
"I never talk a lot, but I can to him," Joni McDoniel said. "I never saw the chair. It was just never a thing."
Jim McDoniel included Joni's letter in his book, which his son helped edit. Chet also wrote the final chapter and says he values his copies.
"It's an awesome thing to know my parents' thoughts. I appreciate that very much," he said. "I've got them in print, and they will last longer than people."
He points out that he's only 26. His career has just begun, and he and Joni just built a new house in Keller.
"There could be Volume Two," McDoniel said.
ONLINE: www.allheneedsforheaven.com
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Mark Agee, 817-685-3821 rmagee@star-telegram.com
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Copyright (c) 2006, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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Source: Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Fort Worth, Texas)
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