The Villages Daily Sun

Twelve-year-old Reggie Colton had the life he nearly lost, his family’s love and the support of the Wildwood community after a train ran over him on Oct. 17, 1977, but he didn’t appear to have much of a future.

“Anybody who ever thought about a 12-year-old kid laying beside the train tracks with his legs detached would say, ‘How could he ever cope?’ ” says Dug Jones, Reggie’s longtime friend, who is also disabled.

Dorothy Colton, a single mother trying to raise four children on a miminum-wage paycheck, didn’t know how her son would cope, but she insisted that he would.

“ ‘Never quit.’ She said, ‘You just do your stuff and don’t quit. The important thing is you just have to find a way to make it work,’ ” says Reggie from the sprawling home he designed just west of Gainesville, where he works as an occupational therapist.

Reggie embraced his mother’s work ethic, but he needed more than a guiding philosophy as he left childhood behind. He desperately needed a father. But his biological dad wasn’t interested.

Fortunately for “Ma” Colton, someone was.

“My first day at Wildwood High School, I had 80 or 90 kids in my P.E. classes and nobody mentioned that I would have a double-amputee kid in a wheelchair,” recalls Mark Crowder, who was a 27-year-old teacher in 1979. “I saw him roll in in the back of the locker room and I remember thinking, ‘What am I going to do with this kid?’ ”

What Crowder did was respect, challenge and eventually love the skinny kid with the infectious smile.

The day they met, Crowder told Reggie, “We’ll do whatever you’re comfortable with. You’re going to work out. You have to exercise. You do as much as you can.”

From the beginning, Reggie’s goal was to excel, not merely exercise. Crowder, impressed, set the bar high.

Crowder established a weightlifting team, and Reggie became a state champion. When Reggie wanted to accompany Crowder to 10K road races the teacher competed in, Crowder hit up local businesses for donations and bought his student a racing wheelchair.

Reggie felt he could do anything he set his mind to. So Crowder introduced him to swimming.

“I wasn’t making much money, so I had a little weekend job doing maintenance at the Days Inn there in Wildwood,” recalls Crowder, who is now a school principal in Arkansas. “I asked the manager if they’d let me use the pool after I got off work to give my boy some swimming lessons. That’s where Reggie learned to swim. He swallowed a few gallons of water, but he overcame it. He wasn’t afraid to try anything.”

“My boy.” The words touched Reggie’s heart.

“He was the most inspirational teacher — and man — in my life,” Reggie says. “Not having a dad, you miss out on a lot. My dad, Gerald Nelson Sr., was a sorry excuse of a man who chose not to raise his kids. Having someone like coach Crowder in my life didn’t totally fill the void, but it gave me something I needed. Coach Crowder got me involved. He changed my life.”

Crowder, who is as white as Reggie is black, couldn’t know how deeply he touched Dorothy’s son.

“Coach Crowder worked with him,” Dorothy says. “He taught him to swim and they would go running together. Afterwards, he used to come to the house; he’d lay on the floor with Reggie. He was just a good guy. He was special.”

Crowder also introduced Reggie to wheelchair basketball.

Having it all

“Coach Crowder didn’t fall into the trap a lot of P.E. teachers fall into; the trap of having the disabled kid keep score,” says Jones, who was playing wheelchair basketball for the North Florida Renegades when Crowder discovered the key to unlocking Reggie’s potential.

“Myself and a group of other wheelchair basketball players came to Wildwood to put on a disability awareness program and to provide an opportunity for Reggie to see what he could do,” recalls Jones. “Coach Crowder arranged it just for Reggie, even though it was a convocation for the whole school.”

Reggie was reluctant to attend.

“I didn’t want to see no wheelchair basketball. I was playing with able-bodied guys,” Reggie says with a laugh. “But when I saw them play, I was like, ‘Wow!’ I was so impressed. I was sold right then and there. I knew I wanted to do that. That was my outlet.”

Reggie was asked to join the team after just one practice with them. He was a natural. It was as if he was meant to play the game.

Crowder realized that Reggie was at a crossroads in his life.

“I could see that his ability in wheelchair basketball could take him out of Wildwood, and I felt the need to talk to his mom. I said, ‘This is probably going to expose him to the world. Do you want me to pursue this for him, or should I nip it in the bud?’ I knew she might not want her son to leave home. But she said, ‘Coach Crowder, you do whatever you think is best for Reggie.’ She had that love and capacity as a mom to cut that relationship.”

With Ma’s blessing, the Colton kid entered the grown-up world of big-time wheelchair basketball.

“He was one of the quickest players to learn the game. Typically, it takes players time to make the transition, but he quickly became adept. Within that first season he played significant minutes,” Jones says. “He was a tenacious offense rebounder and his individual post-ups were unstoppable. If he got somebody in the low block, he had ’em.”

Reggie was well on his way to stardom by the time he graduated from high school and moved to Gainesville to attend Santa Fe Community College to be closer to his teammates.

Away from home, Reggie made a momentous decision regarding his latest pair of artificial legs.

“I didn’t throw them in the closet, I threw them in the garbage,” Reggie exclaims. “I looked at myself and how effective I am without them. I’ve come to terms with who I am. I’m a man without legs.”

On the basketball court, opponents had to come to terms with Reggie’s combination of tremendous upper body strength and unwavering determination.

“There’s a lot of chair contact, and Reggie is fearless when he goes after the ball. It’s nothing for him to turn his chair over dozens of times in a game,” Jones says. “He used to break one of his [leather] belts [that held him in his chair] every game. And he’d break a chair a year. He torques the back of the chair so much that the metal would actually break.”

“You couldn’t stop me,” Reggie states with a twinkle in his eye. “I’m just going to wear you out. Whoever’s guarding me, it doesn’t matter.”

And Reggie just kept getting better and better.

“My goal was to be the best wheelchair basketball player in Florida. I did that. Then my goal was to be the best wheelchair basketball player in the Southwest. And I did that. Then, to be the best in the U.S.A. Did that. Each time I reached a goal, I set a new one. My last goal was to be the best in the world. And I did that. I kept setting my goals higher each time,” Reggie says.

The boy who wasn’t good enough to be first-string for Wildwood’s “Baby” Wildcats football team became king of the wheelchair basketball hill.

“He was the best in the world in 1995,” Jones says.

The greatest prizes

Reggie wants to continue playing for the Dallas Wheelchair Mavericks — the team he’s led to four titles — but he no longer has time to adequately train to compete at the National Wheelchair Basketball Association’s highest level.

Besides, he’d rather bounce on the trampoline with his 4-year-old son, Malik, wheel around the driveway in pursuit of 6-year-old R.C.’s bike or push 2-year-old Yasmine’s pedal car.

“I missed doing this with my father. You make ’em, you got to take care of them. I didn’t have a role model that was there every day, but I picked up bits and pieces from others who I thought was doing it right. You just have to get your inspiration and knowledge from wherever you can.”

One source of his parenting inspiration is obvious. Reginald Crowder (R.C.) Colton is named after the Wildwood P.E. teacher who took a fatherly interest in the boy who was hit by the train.

“I always knew if I had a son I would name him after coach Crowder,” Reggie says.

Crowder moved back to Arkansas after three years in Wildwood, but he never forgot the skinny kid who taught him so much about determination and positive thinking. That’s why Crowder’s 14-year-old son is named Reginald.

Reggie is honored, but quick to point out that he’s just a regular guy — which is the point he’s been trying to prove ever since a train severed his legs.

“I’ve got my ups and downs. Things are not perfect. It’s a journey, a true-life journey,” says Reggie, who has been divorced twice. “I’m nothing special, I’m just living my life. I’m just Reggie.”

But what a Reggie he’s become.

“I’ve gone through a divorce, and it can be hard raising two children, but I look at all he went through and how he made it without legs. If he can climb to the top, I’m sure I can make it,” says Reggie’s younger sister, Carla, a teacher’s aide at Wildwood High School.

“I’ve coached and taught a lot of kids, and I hoped I left an impression, but Reggie made an impression on my life, instead of the other way around,” says Wildwood Mayor Ed Wolf, Reggie’s middle school football coach.

“Ma” Colton still calls Oct. 17, 1977, “the awfullest day of my life,” but she’s convinced that her son became an admirable man because of the accident in the CSX Railroad switching yard.

“God was just with us. He didn’t want to take Reggie; he just made things better for us. Sometimes tragedy brings people closer.”

Gary Corsair is a senior writer with the Daily Sun. He can be reached at 753-1119, ext. 7907, or gary.corsair@thevillagesmedia.com.