motivational
Quadriplegic for 20 years, he never stopped mowing lawns
He broke his neck in a pool. He kept the mowers running.
Ben Medley has run his own lawn care business in Kentucky for nearly 25 years, and a diving accident in July 2005 did not stop him. Medley broke two vertebrae in his neck at a party at his parents' house, on his one-year wedding anniversary. He is now quadriplegic, without hand function. He kept mowing anyway. He built a custom Hoyer lift into the bed of his white pickup truck, a setup he compares to a hospital lift bolted onto his trailer. It moves him from the driver's seat into his wheelchair, then hoists him onto his mower. He uses it 15 times a day, working a remote by bending his wrist. Chase Stetson, who runs a lawn care account as That Lawn Dude, met Medley at a Mexican restaurant and posted the rig online. "It's a little bit slower than most people," Medley says of the process, "but it keeps me going."