D-III player who suffered major spinal cord injury walks at graduation (Video)
Memorial Day should be about honor and inspiration, and one former football player added some of the latter during his college graduation on Saturday.
Chris Norton, a former player for Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, walked across the stage to receive his diploma a little more than five years after doctors told him he had a three percent of regaining movement after suffering a fractured neck and a compressed spinal cord.
On Oct. 26, 2010, Norton, then a freshman at Lutheran, was covering a kickoff when an opposing player’s knee came up and knocked Norton in the head. He was motionless and had to be airlifted to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
“They told me there was a three percent chance of any kind of movement below the injury site,” Chris said in a 2011 interview with Des Moines television station KCCI. “So that was definitely a big blow. But it never really seemed real. Just knew right from the beginning that that wasn’t going to be the case and that I was going to be able to walk and be able to move again.”
A year after his accident, Chris was able to stand on his own and shortly afterward he began taking steps. His journey is chronicled in a piece KCCI aired Monday.
After walking in his graduation, he proposed to his girlfriend, who said yes, making an even more tear-jerking moment that much more emotional.
H/T Eye On CFB
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Graham Watson is the editor of Dr. Saturday on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email her at dr.saturday@ymail.com or follow her on Twitter! Follow @YahooDrSaturday
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