Magazine Feature
Featured on the cover of DIVERSEability Magazine this month!
Here’s the article:
John Register – Demand Your Place in the Space
Interview and Story by Tawanah Reeves-Ligon | Read full article
Article links:
Read the full article on the DiversityComm Website by Tawanah Reeves-Ligon
DIVERSEability – LinkedIn post about the article — share this article and connect with us!
A Message from John:
As we continue to inspire worlds we are fortunate to come alongside others who are doing the same. I want to send a huge thank you to DiversityComm for this honor to be the cover feature for the Fall 2022 DIVERSEability Magazine!
Thank you to the President and Founder of DiversityComm, Mona Lisa Faris-Placey, and her leadership at DiversityComm for creating space for these conversations! And thank you to the Managing Editor, Tawanah Reeves-Ligon for the time to interview as well as the DiversityComm team for all the work that goes into the publication for our community.
#DIVERSEability #diversitycomm #diversity #disability #DemandYourPlaceInTheSpace
Photography: Danielle Trina Photography
“When our truth outweighs our fear, we will commit to a courageous life.” – John Register
Profile of John Register, Fulbright College of the University of Arkansas
[alert type=”info”]This article was originally posted from University of Arkansas.[/alert]John Register (BA ’88)
[image-shortcode url=”https://johnregister.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/john-register-profile.jpg”]John Register was an All-American Track star while earning a BA in communications. After a crippling injury resulted in the amputation of his left leg, he became a long jump silver medalist in the Paralympic Games. He was appointed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as one of an eight-member council to advise the secretary on foreign policy issues regarding disability. He founded Inspired Communications and travels the country as a speaker and motivator.
No Hurdle Has Been Too Great For John Register
[alert type=”info”]This article was originally posted from NewsOK.com.[/alert]John Register lost his leg while serving in the Army.
It didn’t happen the way you probably think.
This wasn’t a combat wound. This wasn’t a wartime horror. Register, 49, an Olympic hurdle hopeful once upon a time, lost his leg when he was injured during practice. He dislocated his kneecap and ended up having his leg amputated.
[image-shortcode url=”https://johnregister.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/john-running-02.jpg” size=”33″]A longtime track and field historian researched back to the early 1900s to see if there were any other injuries like it but found none.
But in the two decades since his injury, Register believes he has gained way more than he lost.
“Now, I do more with one leg than I would’ve ever thought to do with two,” he said while taking a break Tuesday from the Veterans with Disabilities Entrepreneurship Program.
In Stillwater for a week-long business boot camp sponsored free of charge to the veterans by OSU’s Spears School of Business, Register hopes to learn how to better help athletes who he meets as the associate director for community and veterans programs for U.S. Paralympics. He also wants to be better with his own business, Inspired Communications, which works to inspire and motivate teams of all kinds.
The hurdler who lost a leg hasn’t stopped jumping over obstacles.
Register was a member of four national championship track and field teams at Arkansas in the late 1980s. The four-time All-American did the sprints, the long jump and the hurdles, but when he finished college, he started to focus on the hurdles.
He enlisted in the Army and became part of the Army’s World Class Athlete Program. Making the Olympic team became his mission.
Even with tours of duty in Desert Shield and Desert Storm, Register continued progressing on the track. He made the Olympic trials in 1988 and 1992, and with his times in the 400-meter hurdles dropping about .3 of a second each year, he was on track to have a time that would get him into the finals at the 1996 Olympic trials.
But then late one May afternoon in 1994, Register was finishing a training session in Hays, Kan. He was making one last pass when his left leg landed awkwardly after he cleared one of the jumps.
“Something went wrong,” Register said, “and it just snapped.”
His bones didn’t snap. His kneecap did.
The patella in his left knee ended up about three inches higher than his femur. His leg bent at a sickening angle as he lay on the track. The worst of it, though, was that the dislocation clamped off an artery just behind the knee cap.
Blood couldn’t get to the lower half of Register’s leg.
It took 90 minutes for an ambulance to arrive — to this day, Register isn’t sure why the delay was so great — and then it took a few more hours before he could be flown to Wichita to see a vascular surgeon. It was past midnight, more than seven hours after the injury, when he was finally on the operating table.
“What did me in was time,” Register said. “Without blood, the leg starts dying.”
By the time his surgeon intervened, he could give Register only two options. Fuse the knee, and have such limited range of motion that a walker or wheelchair would be needed to get around. Or amputate the leg above the knee. That would lead to a prosthetic leg, but Register would still be able to walk.
For Register, the choice was easy.
“I knew it had to be amputation,” he said.
Still, the reality was harsh. He lost most of his leg less than a week after posting the year’s eighth fastest hurdle time by an American.
What else might he lose? His marriage? His relationship with his son? His relationship with his parents? His job in the Army? His identity?
A couple days after the amputation, Register went with his wife and 5-year-old son to a playground near the hospital. Not yet fitted for a prosthetic, Register broke down as he watched them play.
Wife, Alice, noticed the tears.
“You know what?” she told him. “We’re going to get through this together.”
That got Register to thinking — maybe he wasn’t going to lose his marriage. Maybe he was still going to be a husband and a father and a son and a military man. Maybe he could even still be an athlete.
“Maybe it’s not about what I lost,” he thought. “It’s about what we gain.”
During his recovery and rehab, Register took to swimming, which had been one of his sports growing up. Someone mentioned early on that the Paralympics might be something he could consider.
Less than two years after his injury, Register made the 1996 U.S. Paralympic team. He swam in the Paralympics in Atlanta, then four years later, he returned in Sydney. But the second time around, he competed on the track. He won the silver in the long jump and set an American record of 17.8 feet.
His journey has been chronicled numerous times over the years. Who doesn’t love a lemons-to-lemonade story like his? And a few years back, Register was riding an airport tram at Washington Dulles with an amputee buddy when his friend struck up a conversation with a gal who worked for United. Her name was Susan, and she had read a story in the Washington Post about a man who’d lost a leg and become a Paralympian, then had seen him on TV.
Register’s buddy smiled.
“I think you’re talking about him,” he said, pointing to Register.
Susan couldn’t believe it. Neither could Register, who gave her one of his business cards.
Last summer while Register was buying a hot dog in Colorado Springs, where he lives and works, his cell phone rang. It was Susan. She had lost his business card after their meeting, but while cleaning out a drawer two years later, she found it. She figured that his number had probably changed, but she tried it anyway.
She wanted to thank him.
When they’d met, she’d been battling breast cancer. She had decided to attack it several ways, including having a mastectomy. It was a tough choice. It was a painful time. But Susan decided to do everything that she could to fight the cancer — because of Register.
“If this guy can be one of the fastest hurdlers in the country and lose his leg and still come back,” she said, “I can surely go through this.”
Then she told Register, “So, I attribute being alive to our conversation and seeing your story.”
Register still marvels at those circumstances. Yes, he lost part of his leg. Yes, he lost his Olympic dream. But he believes he gained so much more because of the hurdles he overcame after he stopped running the hurdles.
Paralympic Athlete John Register Chosen as Arkansas Alumni Johnson Fellow
[alert type=”info”]This article was originally posted from University of Arkansas Newswire.[/alert] [image-shortcode url=”https://johnregister.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/BW-HeadShot-1.jpg” size=”50″]Alumnus John Register, a University of Arkansas track star turned Paralympic medalist, will return to the University of Arkansas campus on April 8-10 as the Arkansas Alumni Association’s 2014 Johnson Fellow.
Endowed by Dr. Jeff Johnson, B.A.’70, and his wife, Marcia, the Johnson Fellows program was created to bring esteemed alumni back to the University of Arkansas campus to engage and inspire students. Register is the fifth Johnson Fellow.
Register, who now resides in Colorado Springs, Colo., will share his message about “Hurdling Adversity.” The All-American Razorback qualified for the Olympic trials twice, once in the 110-meter hurdles in 1988 and again in 400-meter hurdles in 1992. He was on his way to competing as a member of the 1996 Olympic team when a misstep over a hurdle caused a serious injury leading to the amputation of his leg. After 18 months of rehabilitation and training, he competed on the 1996 paralympic team as a swimmer. He was soon fitted with a running prosthesis and earned a silver medal in the long jump at the 2000 Paralympic Games, setting the American long jump record. He also placed fifth in both the 100- and 200-meter dashes.
Athletics have been Register’s passion since he began swimming competitively at the Oak Park, Ill., YMCA. He then moved on to baseball and football. He eventually started competing in track and field, the sport that earned him a scholarship to the University of Arkansas. There he became a four-time All-American – once in the NCAA long jump, once in the 55-meter hurdles and twice on the 4×400 meter relay teams. He was part of four national championship track teams under coach John McDonnell.
As a track athlete, Register watched McDonnell build a track dynasty that won 42 national championships.
“You have to work very hard,” Register said. “If someone’s ahead of you, you have to work harder. That’s the Razorback spirit.”
Register completed his bachelor’s degree in communications in 1988 and then enlisted in the U.S. Army. As a Desert Shield and Desert Storm veteran, Register continued to pursue athletics in the Army’s World Class Athlete Program, winning nine gold medals in the Armed Services Competition and two World Military Championships.
In 2003, he accepted a position with the U.S. Olympic Committee in Colorado and created the Paralympic Military Program, which uses sports to assist wounded service members. He also works as an inspirational speaker.
Register said he is amazed to be chosen as a Johnson Fellow, and he is honored to come back and give back to the University of Arkansas. He is eager to show students how forceful the impact their years on campus will be in their futures and “Call the Hogs” with them.
“I’m most looking forward to being able to see the future of our country and our world,” he said. “Our world is now a global market. When I was there, the campus looked one way. Having Walmart headquarters so close to campus has changed the whole landscape.”
His message for University of Arkansas students will be that “you can hurdle anything. All of us face adversity in our lives. How we handle the adversity is a direct reflection of our true character.”