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[gentle music playing]
[group talking indistinctly]
[man] Dear Lord, the battles we go through in life.
[group repeats]
-[man] We ask for a chance to despair. -[group repeats]
-[man] A chance to earn our stripes. -[group repeats]
-A chance to do it or dare. -[group repeats]
-If we should win. -[group repeats]
-Let it be by the code. -[group repeats]
-[man] Our faith and honor held high. -[group repeats]
-If we should lose. -[group repeats]
-We stand by the row. -[group repeats]
-Cheers as the victors go by. -[group repeats]
-Day by day! -[group repeats]
-We get better and better! -[group repeats]
-Beat again! -[group repeats]
-Can't be beat. -[group repeats]
-Won't be beat. -[group repeating]
[all chanting]
[cheering]
That whole sense of excitement and desire to,
to be your best, is permeating throughout that room.
We're playing a really tough opponent.
One of the longstanding,
traditionally very good teams in our league.
And yet there's a sense of confidence.
[cheering]
And we just storm out on the field.
There's energy from the stadiums and cheerleaders.
It's just like something that you can't get anywhere else,
other than playing football.
[crowd chanting]
We just had… It was just a fun, fun day.
We got there early, we watched them warm up,
we tailgated with their friends
and we're just all having a great time,
just the three of us.
[Terry] Going into the fifth game, he had beat out players on the team
that were first team all staters
and was playing more than any other freshman on the team,
'cause he was on all the special teams,
so we were really excited for him.
It was also a big game because they were playing Central
and Central has long time been a conference champion
and always done really well nationally, too.
They always go to the playoffs
and their head football coach, Jeff McMartin,
had really recruited Chris hard.
[Chris] We started off the game, really slow.
Central scored on us right away.
They had all the momentum.
[group chattering]
Let's go, let's go, Yeah, it's a big deal, let's go.
[shouting]
[Chris] We go into halftime
and we're pretty down on ourselves.
And coach just rips into us
and lights a fire underneath us,
where we come out in the third quarter.
[whistle blowing]
All of a sudden our offense puts together a great run.
[dramatic rock music playing]
And we score.
And I remember everybody's excited.
We're within striking distance, so to speak, at that point.
Momentum started turning, the crowd's into it,
the sideline's all fired up.
And this time it was my turn to make the play.
And we were all really excited and maybe a little bit jealous
that Chris was out there, 'cause he was just a freshman
and a lot of us didn't get to play on special teams, even then.
I remember being super excited for Chris
because he was playing as a true freshman,
and he was one of two or three kids.
I mean, that was a pretty big deal.
We had 120 kids on the roster,
so you had to be pretty dang good to break that.
[Chris] So I came in with just extra motivations,
extra adrenaline that I need to make a play.
So play with simple mortar kick right,
which got me more excited because I'm on the right side of the field,
even more of a chance for me to make a play
and I knew I was going to.
This was going to be my opportunity to really shine
and change the game for us.
[dramatic music playing]
I sprint down the field as hard as I can go
and I see the opening
of where I know the ball carrier is gonna run through.
I ended up returning it
and at that time I tried to cut right.
And my instincts tell me to dive. However, I mistimed my jump,
just by a split second.
A routine football play that we've done a million times
changed Chris's world forever.
[audience cheering]
[dramatic thud]
[announcer] Chris Norton is down as of right now.
You just hope and pray that he's doing okay.
It felt as if someone just turned the power off to my body.
I couldn't feel a thing.
I'm a little further distance away from him at the time,
but even at the distance that I was at, you could tell he's not moving.
Even athletes in pain, move.
You can only imagine what's going through his head at the moment,
when your face is down towards grass,
facing kind of one direction
and that's all you can see and you can't change it.
[Chris] The trainers asked me questions like,
"Chris, can you make a fist with your hand?"
I tried making a fist, nothing happens.
I'm just thinking, "No, I'll be fine,
don't worry about me, this is embarrassing."
The game is stopped for me, I hate that kind of attention.
[Deb] And I remember just watching, not being able to quite process
that he wasn't getting up,
because he took some tough tackles in high school,
he always gets up.
[Del] It got really quiet, the field and the whole stadium kind of,
you can feel the air suck out of everybody.
And a typical football play, when somebody gets hurt,
you take a knee and I remember being on a knee for,
for an extended amount of time and being, like, at a certain point,
okay, this is different. This is serious.
It was just such an eerie feeling in that stadium.
It's on such a beautiful day for this kind of horrifying scene
and you can just tell by the looks on their faces,
that this is bad.
Just as long as I live, I'll just remember that image
of just seeing a stadium with 5,000 people,
where you can hear a pin drop,
and then all these players down on one knee.
One thing that's special about football is,
no matter who you are, it's always a brotherhood
and it was hard to see someone laying there
and couldn't move.
[Chris] I remember just having my eyes just completely shut
and closed, trying to block out what was happening around me,
I just didn't want to accept it.
I knew it was real,
but it was just so hard for me to swallow that.
I mean, they were doing everything right,
working on him, and we still give thanks to this day for that training staff,
because us not knowing at the time
that it was a spinal cord injury. Just the slightest movement
is the difference between never having a chance
to regain anything.
So we get down to the field and we come in close
and I remember leaning over
and saying something like, "Okay, we're here"
just to let Chris know that we were down there,
that we were with him.
The beauty of everything that had been going on that day
is non-existent, all you're doing is focusing
on the face of a young man,
that is one of your players that has sacrificed time
and given every effort he can
to be the best player he can be, lying there helpless.
[Chris] The EMTs come out eventually. I'm still thinking, I'll be okay.
I'm 18 years old from small town Iowa,
bad things happen to other people.
It happens to people you read about in the newspaper,
or you watch on television.
There's no way this could happen to me.
I've been to a lot of sporting events
and the injured athlete's always been able
to acknowledge the crowd,
you give them a thumbs up, a wave, and I couldn't.
That took my fear to another level.
[Richie] I still didn't think it was serious,
even when Chris was being wheeled off in the ambulance.
I thought we were still going to go over
to my house that night.
To me, it was just, he might've gotten a concussion
or, might've messed up a shoulder or something.
But when you're 18 years old,
the gravity of the situation never really sets in.
[Chris] Eventually they get me into the ambulance
and drive me to the hospital.
They had cut his uniform off him.
In fact, I ran across that bag with his…
[sniffles]
…his uniform in it and that was tough.
But when they called in for the helicopter,
that's when my fear really erupted inside me.
And I knew it was serious.
My breathing starting to go down,
I'm just like gasping for air,
felt like as if I was breathing through a straw
that you would drink with coffee.
I remember just thinking I may die,
if I don't take control of my feelings, my emotions,
my heart was just racing out of control.
We finished the game and as we'd always done,
we gathered one end of the field
and we talked about it.
We said, "Hey, we know that something has happened with Chris,
but we're going to need to try to fight on,
we're gonna try to move forward,
we're gonna try to be the best we can be in this situation."
And what was really difficult as I was talking to them,
I could hear a helicopter.
Now, in the city of Decorah,
that's not an everyday occurrence.
So I knew they were transporting.
I look up and I tell my family, tell my friends too,
I said, "That's not good."
"That's not good."
And I just remember glancing over
and seeing that helicopter.
[gently sobbing]
And he was going to be by himself in that helicopter
and we were going to have to drive all the way to Rochester,
not knowing what was gonna happen.
[gentle dramatic music]
Instantly, they have me rushing through the halls.
I get to a room, just this bright,
sterile room with all these different medical personnel,
all gathered around, just waiting for me.
-[nurse] We're good? -And back, one, two, three.
They were testing sensation and movements
and it was just a chaotic scene,
of all these people working on me.
It just was this gradual increase in fear
that just kept gripping me.
In this time I'm just,
I'm still closing my eyes like, this can't be happening.
This is just all part of a bad dream.
The tackle resulted in some bending forward
of his neck and of excessive force
or flection of the neck caused a fracture dislocation
between the C3 and the C4, cervical vertebrae,
then pinched or compressed the spinal cord,
resulting in the paralysis that he experienced immediately on the field.
By virtue of placing him in traction
and putting some force on his head and neck,
his surgical team was able to realign
or partially realign his fractured dislocation.
And I could just feel the blood trickled down my hair
and my head and just, it was the worst pain I've ever felt.
And then they started adding weight.
The sound was awful,
it sounded like a celery stick breaking.
I wouldn't wish that upon my worst enemy,
to have to go through something like that.
After the traction, I get into this MRI room
and they put me on the board
and it slowly brings me into the machine,
which the machine is so tight and claustrophobic.
And once the machine starts,
it makes this, like, kind of a rattling sound
that's really obnoxious.
I was in such an uncomfortable position
with the neck brace, the sounds,
just feeling overwhelmed about what just happened to me.
What's my life gonna look like going forward?
Can this possibly be real?
Is this really my life?
I've been praying this entire time.
Just praying to God, give me the strength to get through this,
give me the strength back that I need to just walk
and put this all behind me.
I don't ever need to play sports again,
just give me the ability to walk.
And it turned to, "God,
can you just let me sleep for the next hour
that I'll be in this MRI machine?"
I thought that would be impossible to sleep
in that kind of situation.
But the next thing I remember
is being lowered out of the MRI machine.
I had fallen asleep. In that moment, I knew I wasn't alone.
That was the sign that I needed to experience,
to know that God's with me.
That was a miracle to me.
The surgeon finally comes, and this is before surgery,
and pulls us into a room
and then he's only got a 3% chance
of ever regaining any movement below his neck.
And I can't even describe how horrible that moment was.
Just felt like my heart was crushed
and my life was just torn out of me,
that my son, that I had coached,
have had such a great relationship with,
I mean we've just always been really, really close
and, um, it was just devastating.
You know, I remember sitting there in the hallway,
thinking, "Our life just completely changed."
And I just got so restless, like,
I'm just like, "I have to get out of here,"
and I just took off walking and I ended up at the chapel.
I just needed to be there and pray.
I sat down at a pew and I looked up
and on the ceiling above me was a mural
of Jesus holding this injured man.
And I thought, "You know what? I was meant to sit here.
God has us, He's gonna take care of him.
He's gonna get through the surgery
and I don't know what the outcome's gonna be,
but whatever it is,
me and my family are gonna get through this."
[nurse] Bed's locked.
One, two, three.
[Chris] You can just see in their eyes,
that they were emotional and scared for me
and then I asked the surgeon a question,
that I've been really wanting to ask the entire time,
but I knew I couldn't ask it until this moment,
which was, "Will I walk again?"
I don't care about sports at this point, I don't care about running,
I just… Give me the ability to walk
and I'll put that all behind me,
I'll be okay with just being able to walk.
And I was hoping for a very straight, honest answer.
I figured they'd have all the answers and they don't.
And he just said, "Chris, I don't know."
And he just looked at the ground in defeat.
You know, something I've always done my whole life
is to stay positive, stay calm
and this was a time where I just let it all out.
I just started to cry and that's when they put me to sleep.
[gentle dramatic music playing]
[Chris] My dad is my hero.
He's always been there for me
and the thing about him that I really appreciate,
is that he's always seen more in myself than I could see
and he would always try to pull that out of me.
And I had high expectations for myself,
but he'd always raise the bar.
Chris was this,
he… I always say this,
he was special because he wasn't necessarily special.
And what I mean by that is,
Chris was never faster than everyone else,
he was never bigger than everyone else,
he was never stronger,
but he just had no quit in him.
And I remember when he kind of was in that
middle school range, he wore glasses
and we signed him up to play tackle football for the first time
and took him down to this small town, about 30 minutes south of where we live.
And so here's this little guy with glasses
and they said, "Well, what position do you wanna play?"
And he said, "Middle linebacker."
And they were looking at this little guy going, "Um…"
[coach] All right, Norton, let's see what you've got.
All right, everybody, huddle up, here we go.
[cheering]
[Terry] And then they saw how he could put a hit,
I mean, even at a young age, he could put a hit on people.
[cheering]
[cheering indistinctly]
[player] And hut!
[Terry] He ended up scoring all these touchdowns for 'em
and they won the championship
and he led the team in tackles and he was just this little guy,
with that football helmet on, and these glasses looking through it,
but that was just him.
He was just very humble, very unassuming,
but he just never quit and worked harder than everyone else.
[announcer] Norton with blockers out in front of him,
he could go all the way! How about this?
A 94-yard touchdown return.
[Chris] I loved high school football,
it was so fun playing, Friday night lights,
strap on the pads and helmets with your friends
that you grew up with, like, your entire life
and just playing from the community
that you've been a part of for so long.
It was just, like, such an honor to be out there.
I was very average at a lot of things,
but I always tried to be better
than what came naturally to me.
[announcer] And it's the hard-hitting Chris Norton.
[Chris] I could tackle, that was the one thing
I was really good at, was just tackling people.
And so that's where I really,
people kind of started to recognize me
for being a hard hitter.
[announcer] And what a hit out of bounds.
He got cracked down by Chris Norton.
Because he was very aggressive in football,
that he felt that football would be something
that would just be more enjoyable,
that he could go right into as a freshman,
work his way onto some special teams
and have the opportunity to start playing.
And last minute, I did an overnight visit with Luther College,
I just felt like this is the right place for me.
I remember just trying to prove myself
at each game, each day, and I wanted to be a starter.
[loud thud]
[dramatic music]
One of the best football players to pass through Bondurant-Farrar High School
is struggling to feel his limbs this afternoon.
News channel 8's Eric Hanson found out
both his hometown and his new college community
are rallying around the teenager,
who wasn't given much hope of moving again.
[Hanson] Last fall when Bondurant-Farrar
needed a big tackle or wanted to go deep,
they called on number five, Chris Norton.
[crowd cheering]
He's just one of those guys that you knew, if there was a collision someplace,
there's contact, Chris Norton would be involved with it.
[Hanson] Norton had so many highlights, high school Friday nights
turned into Saturday afternoons at Luther College.
The kid who wore number five in high school
and 16 in college was flown to the Mayo Clinic,
where he was given a 3% chance of ever moving again.
[Chris] I thought, hopefully I would just wake up
from the nightmare and it just kept getting worse.
I remember waking up in such a fog.
It was blurry and it was just hard
to really make sense of what was around me.
Eventually the surgeon comes in
and gives the news of what they saw, what happened.
Chris's surgery involved, um, placing rods and screws
in the cervical vertebra
to help maintain them in alignment,
while the bone grafting material healed.
And so what we know is when someone can't feel
anything at all in their body,
especially around the buttocks area,
their chances of significant recovery is quite low.
They gave me a 3% chance to ever regain
any feeling or movement back below the neck.
He was my big brother, someone I always looked up to
and he seemed invincible to me.
So to see him in a hospital bed, I just, I couldn't believe it.
[Chris] My parents' faces of just concern and worry,
but trying to stay strong for me.
He was moving his arm or doing something
and I remember thinking,
"Oh, my gosh, he's got some movement."
[Terry] Chris could move his left arm
and he just kept moving it over and over again
and he didn't think I was noticing, so he's winking at me,
but he wanted to show me, "Hey, I just beat the 3%."
That little movement just gave me
that huge boost of hope that I'm gonna beat this,
this is not-- I'm not gonna be part of the 97%
that doesn't recover from this.
We were not going to let this change who we were,
what we did, what we found joy in,
we weren't going to do it,
so we kind of put our battle armor on that day
and we suited up and we decided, "You know what?"
"There's no challenge too big
that we can't conquer as a family."
[EKG beeping]
[Chris] That first night, you know, I was shaken up,
I couldn't sleep.
Remember just crying in frustration.
"This shouldn't be happening to me. I should be back… in college."
"I should be with my friends. I should be with my teammates."
"I shouldn't be here."
"Why am I here?"
"Why is this happening?"
And not knowing those answers was so frustrating.
I remember my dad reading Bible verses to me to try to,
like, calm me down and to put me at ease,
you know, "God has a bigger calling for you."
Like, we'll get through this,
but you just don't know that,
you don't know if you're gonna get through it.
Is this gonna be my life forever?
Will I always be immobile?
Could I ever have anything that I once lived before?
And the next day, it was probably my lowest moment,
was when my nursing staff came in to bathe me.
[nurse] All right, Chris, we're gonna move down to your legs now.
[Chris] And them just pulling back the covers
and seeing my legs there, motionless and so far away.
Them moving my legs,
like they're moving somebody else's legs,
bathing myself with washcloths and not feeling it.
And just feeling so hopeless and vulnerable
and being so exposed to people you don't even know,
how can this be my life?
[Terry] His two sisters just really rose to the occasion.
Katie and Alex basically cleared out his room at home
and reduplicated his room at the hospital.
Then there was just this outpouring from everywhere.
That was great to see how many people really cared
and see what they could do to help
and just wanted to know what was going on.
Something that really began to really help me is
my family started a Caring Bridge page.
[Alex] It reached hundreds, if not thousands of people,
we had no idea how it did,
but they were touched by his story
and just wanted to give words of encouragement.
So it was really, it was awesome.
My dad, he would read the posts from other people
on that Caring Bridge page.
Well, at night, when he's lying in bed,
that's when all those fears and all that stuff started creeping in
and I always wanted to end the evening
on a positive note with some uplifting things.
All these people are posting these things,
listen to this one here that just came in.
"Chris, there's no doubt in my mind
that you will walk again."
"Keep your eye on the prize, take it one day at a time."
"You are such an inspiration and hopefully you will write
a book, as your life would touch so many."
"With my thoughts and continued prayers, Sharon."
And that just gave me so much courage
that I can't let these people down.
They're all cheering for me, they're all rooting for me to keep going,
like, "Chris, you can do this, keep the faith,
never give up." And it just poured into me
knowing that I can't give up.
The moment that was so impactful to me
came on the fourth night of my hospital stay.
It's 4:00 in the morning, I can't sleep.
I'm so restless, frustrated.
I'm just trying to move my body
and just can't wait till the sun comes up.
And a physician comes in to check my vitals,
which someone comes in and checks my vitals every two hours.
But she did much more than just check my vitals,
she came to my bedside, she got down on one knee.
Chris, look me in the eyes.
[Chris] She was kind of mean about it.
I lock eyes with her.
And she said, "My name is Georgia."
"I'm from Wyoming, do you know anyone from Wyoming?"
I said, "No."
I'm thinking, where is this conversation going?
Just leave me alone, just let me be in my moment.
And she said, "Well, people from Wyoming don't tell lies."
"And I'm going to tell you this, Chris, you will beat this.
You will beat this."
And it was like, she was talking to my soul.
Like, she just broke right through me.
I've had hundreds, if not thousands of people tell me,
"Chris, you can do this, you can beat this."
But it was that moment where I really needed it.
And she was this angel that came when I needed it the most,
to give me the strength even more so to keep going.
It might've been over so quickly, but it was so powerful.
Everybody else checked the vitals and left,
where she did just a little bit extra,
a little bit more and you can do a little bit more,
a little extra on everything that you do,
what you're supposed to do,
that's when you can make the most significant impact
and the biggest difference.
[Deb] He'd been in the hospital a couple of weeks
and this is one thing I really struggled with.
It's like, I want him to date,
I want him to be married someday.
Is that gonna happen?
Like, that was my… I had a real fear about that.
One of the occupational therapists,
I shared that fear with her
and she just looked at me and she goes,
"Deb, he's gonna be fine.
The right person will come along
and they aren't gonna care about that."
As a physical therapist,
it's my job to work towards that common goal
of improvements in function
and improvements in independence
and improvements in recovery.
When Chris came to the rehab unit, um,
he hadn't even been out of bed yet.
The primary goal, for the first three days,
was getting him out of bed, into a chair,
a power wheelchair that he could sit up in
for a couple hours at a time.
[Chris] And so the first day I got in that wheelchair,
I was in it for 30 minutes
and I had to get out before I got sick.
And then the next day I went 45 minutes
and each day I continually, gradually improved my ability to just sit in it,
not do anything and I couldn't drive it,
but just to be able to be upright, that was my therapy.
It was difficult.
And at that point, about a month after his accident,
um, he had feeling at around the top of his shoulders
and a little bit going down his arms
and a small amount of strength in his arms.
And fortunately over the ensuing several weeks,
that progressed as we wanted to see
and hoped for it to see.
Because he was an athlete,
because he was in such good shape and condition before his injury,
he could tolerate more intensity.
So we started doing one hour of physical therapy
in the morning and one hour in the afternoon,
which gave us the opportunity to do a lot of different things
and to really combine the compensation
versus the recovery approach at the same time.
I'll never forget this, it was the middle of the night,
we're both, I thought, asleep,
and I hear this "Dad, Dad."
He said, "The little things that I do extra
is gonna make the difference between what I can and can't do."
And I said, "Well, Chris, that's actually true for all of us."
I said, "Doing those extra things
is what makes us successful or not successful."
And he said, "Well, I want you to put a list up on the wall
and make sure I do those things every single day."
And I said, "Well, Chris, it's 3:00 a.m.
Can we wait till 7:00 to do that?" [laughing]
We'll start tomorrow, bud.
Professionally, I might draw from my personal experiences
and say, "Typically, this is what we see, or this is what we do,"
and I always saw the look in Chris's eyes right away
that he wasn't typical and he wasn't usual.
So I had to refrain from saying those usual words,
but usually the rehab setting is about three hours of therapy a day,
between physical therapy and occupational therapy.
He was definitely always asking for more
and wanting to do more and when he did his
four or five hours of therapy through the day,
he was also doing one to two hours of therapy at night
with his family, which was pretty remarkable.
I had to relearn how to move different parts of my body
with what was connected.
Takes so much tedious work to get those connections back
and that I would fatigue with my nerves, not my muscles.
He was always looking for more to do with therapy.
He was always looking forward to the next milestone,
the next phase of his recovery and the next accomplishment.
[woman] Yeah, lifting your… try to lift your stomach off and hold
and depress it, yes.
[Amy Sikkink] I've never seen anybody's drive like his, ever,
and we've had plenty of patients where…
He was driven from the first day, for sure.
I still talk to a lot of people
that are going through with their child's spinal cord injury.
"When did Chris start moving his legs?"
And that's something a lot of people
with spinal cord injuries really hang on to.
Well, the number we kept hearing was five or six weeks.
Well, it was easy during the first two weeks,
we'd tell Chris, "Hey, it's still early, your body's recovering from the shock."
You start closing in on that five or six weeks
and I know Deb and I were feeling like that collar was starting to tighten.
[Deb] That's incentive, honey, I mean…
[woman] So you might wanna close your eyes.
Even like a little sensation, is it tingly?
[Chris] Yeah, it's a tingling sensation.
I woke up with this new sensation in my left big toe.
Maybe it's like the feeling you get
when you have the covers over your feet and it slides off
and you can feel your toes exposed to, like, that brisk air.
Well, my toe was exposed and I'm excited.
This is huge news, my parents are excited
and we knew we would be able to talk to the doctor
right after we have the morning meeting, which they call rounds.
And I tell my doctor, I'm like, "Okay,
there's something happening in my left big toe,
you've gotta check it out, it's exposed.
I'm going to move it, there's something going on here."
He begins to go into this spiel or a lecture
of how I'm experiencing a phantom feeling
and that these phantom feelings happen a lot
to people with spinal cord injuries,
where they get these made up sensations
and feelings in their heads, because they want it so badly.
Well, can you just take my shoe off?
'Cause I think there is something happening,
I don't think it's a phantom feeling.
I'm thinking, "You should be excited about this,
like, this is huge news, right?"
And he refused to look at my toe.
It's just a trick of your mind.
Um… I know you really want to feel something badly
and I understand. You will not be able
to move anything in your legs ever again.
I am sorry.
[Chris] He says it so nonchalantly,
like it's no big deal, just matter of fact.
But this was like everything to me…
My everyday goal was to get something in my legs
and to move, and to hear that from a doctor was just devastating.
It just caught me off guard.
'Cause I could see the look on his face
and I just immediately teared up,
and I turned and I walked into the bathroom
for just a second and I said, "God, give me strength."
[water running]
[Terry sighs]
Then I turned around and walked right back out
and I said, "Chris, no one is gonna ever determine your outcome but you."
I looked back at him with tears in my eyes
and I responded to that situation with more determination than ever before
that I'm gonna prove this doctor wrong.
We did not like any negative talk around him,
it was only positive talk.
It was only, this is what we're gonna do to get better.
This is what, this is the plan,
it was nothing negative,
and if you had something negative to say,
you better say it in somebody else's room,
'cause it wasn't gonna happen in Chris's room.
And not even a week later, on Thanksgiving morning,
I wiggled that exact left big toe
he said I would never move again.
It was Thanksgiving morning
and we were all excited to get together.
[Chris] Something that I wanted to do right away
was to prank him, I love playing tricks,
and I tell him to come over, I'm like,
"Dad, can you do that pep talk?
Can you yell at my foot again?"
He loves, like, being a goofball and just yelling at my feet.
He would just grab my foot and just like,
give it like a pep talk, like, "Come on, like, wake up,
move, move." He would just yell at it, right?
-[Terry] Let's move. -[laughing]
-[Chris] It's not working. -[Terry] Let's move.
-I need more. I need more out of you. -Let's move.
[Terry] I'm talking, being silly, and all of a sudden that left toe wiggled.
And I just about flew out of my clothes.
I just like jumped back and I'm like, "Did you do that?"
'Cause I thought maybe it was a spasm.
And he goes, "What?"
And so he goes, "Talk to him again."
So I started talking to him again and it wiggles again.
Deb just started a combination of crying and laughing.
Oh, my gosh.
It just… it was such a blessing.
You know, it made our day.
They had it all planned out how they were gonna break that to us.
We just couldn't believe it,
but that's typical Chris fashion.
And I was pumped, I was fired up.
I was like, kind of like, game day excited,
where I was telling my nurses and therapists,
everybody that was there that day,
"You go find that doctor and tell him phantom this,
as I wiggle my toe in his face."
[Dr. Reeves] He began initially to have some strength in his abdomen,
his core muscles that the therapists began to see
in the therapy gym and a few days to a week after that,
several muscles in his legs began to recover.
I, as a tech, am the second set of hands.
So whatever Megan was doing on one side,
I was supposed to reflect that on the other.
Once Megan felt comfortable, which was pretty quick,
she's like, "We're gonna stand him." I'm like, "Okay."
And next thing you know, we get him up on his feet.
[Chris] I'd have, like, three therapists gathered around me,
all supporting me, I had leg braces on,
I had ACE bandage wraps all the way up my legs.
And all this armor, really,
to just be able to try to stand.
To be upright, to be standing,
it just gave me a sense of freedom.
[gentle uplifting music]
After that six-week mark,
where I was able to kind of initiate some steps
with spasticity, I would really help kick my legs up and forward
and I just tried to use that to try to move my legs a little bit,
but I needed help with someone moving my legs for me.
Mayo facilities are top-notch,
but more importantly, the people are top-notch
and that's what was most important to me,
where I wanted to be there so badly
and I knew they'd give me the best opportunity to recover.
I don't care what anybody else has to say,
like, I'm walking out of this hospital.
I just kind of had that naive belief in myself,
but I don't care, you kind of need that.
You kind of need that reckless, abandoned belief in yourself
that you're gonna overcome it.
What was really amazing for me
was that my friends constantly visited me,
not just friends, but community members, family friends, family,
you know, so many people just came out just to be there with me.
And that's just something I'll never forget.
It's not what they said or what time they came,
it was just that they were there.
[all greeting Chris]
[Chris] My friends would make the drive from Luther College,
which is almost an hour and a half ride each way,
and they'd do it during, you know, school,
and they'd do it on the weekends.
They just came and visited me as much as possible
and that just meant the world to me.
The reason we went up to visit him, a lot of people think
is to make him feel better,
but most of the time it was just because
we wanted to see him and we always felt better after we talked to him.
[Tanner Douglas] As soon as we walked in, it was, like,
we were just sitting in the dorms. There was never an ounce of sadness,
or stress on his face,
he's just happy to be around all the guys.
See, when you go to a hospital, you think, you know,
people are sick, you know, kind of a heavy and somber mood,
but whenever we went, we tried to make Chris laugh,
and to make him feel like he's one of the guys.
[Tanner] So we found the ugliest sweaters we possibly could
and brought them up and forced Chris
into taking an ugly Christmas sweater picture with us.
-[laughter] -[man] There you go.
[Richie] We used to Skype him into our party sometime.
We'd all, like, turn the music down and have Skype up
and Chris would just come in from nowhere
and the whole room would go crazy.
He was like a celebrity on campus, I mean, it was crazy.
Everyone always wanted to know how Chris was doing.
It was such a cool community atmosphere.
It's very unique to have a core set of male friends
who have stepped up to help Chris not only recover,
but get back to life and then live as much of a normal life
as he possibly can, is just unbelievable,
to see the support that they have given him.
And honestly, I feel it's a very,
very important piece of his recovery.
[Deb] I really felt like he had to go back
to college in the fall, because if he didn't,
I just felt like it maybe wouldn't happen,
or something would change.
So I'm just like, "Oh, you're going back to college."
He said, "I'm gonna come back and I'm gonna finish
and graduate." And in our minds we're like,
"Okay, man, you can't really do anything
for yourself right now and that seems like a lofty goal."
And never in his mind or in his words was there any doubt.
And I think that's one of the things
that probably defines Chris is just his determination.
[Chris] I was very anxious going back home in a wheelchair.
I remember my first visit vividly, because I'm going back
to my old life, but a completely different circumstance.
And how are things going to be now that
I'm moving about in a wheelchair versus my own physical ability?
When I came back, it was actually my birthday weekend
and I was so excited to have all my friends there
and we were way late on our reservations.
And we're anxiously trying to get me transferred
into a vehicle and when my friend was transferring me
to the front seat, his butt hit the lock button
and he slams the door shut.
They tried to get back in, they can't.
And I instantly, I look over to the ignition,
I see the keys dangling there and I'm just like,
"Oh, my gosh, is this really happening?"
Well, then they're like, "Hey, just hit the unlock button."
And I went to try to unlock it
and my right arm was so weak that from the front seat,
I couldn't move my arm just enough to hit the unlock.
And that moment I just wanted to break down crying.
Like, I can't even unlock the door of a vehicle.
Everyone realizes, "Oh, my God, Chris, it's his birthday
and he's locked in this car and we have no extra keys."
The keys are in the car.
Our buddies jump in their car and speed off
like 100 miles an hour going to find
an extra spare set of keys,
but it's still 20 miles down the road.
And so at this point, we're late for our reservation
and Chris is just like, he looks like a ghost,
he was just beside himself,
'cause he never wanted to be the guy holding people up.
So we decided to pretend that…
Chris only had a couple of seconds left to breathe,
so he had like a minute left.
[Chris] And he's like, "Do these breathing exercises with me."
And he's like… [breathing deeply]
And we go through this breathing routine
and I just bust out laughing.
That moment almost ruined my day,
it almost ruined my whole night.
Instead, we laughed about it, we joked about it,
and we moved forward and had a great night.
[Alex Peterson] Chris was gone for all those months
and then all of a sudden he comes back
and it's like having a newborn baby sit on your lap
and be responsible for it at 18 years old.
From the beginning, when he came back to campus,
we were all Chris's caregivers, everyone on the football team really,
but especially the group of, you know,
eight guys that were in our dorm.
And a lot of times that just meant like,
you know, helping him brush his teeth
or helping him get his shoes on in the morning,
helping him get ready for bed.
It was kind of like, we were all kind of single dads
for Chris for a little bit,
which was a really interesting bonding experience.
They're helping me push to class.
Just help me with everything,
just get me to anywhere on campus,
anywhere in the town.
I remember us all sitting together and almost strategically planning out,
who's going to take care of Chris, which day,
when he first got back to college
it was, all of us had to come together and grow up pretty fast,
you know, because we had his life in our hands.
The transition for Chris from his chair to bed every night,
I can remember doing that right away.
You know, you stand him up and he shakes.
You can feel a person that you're holding,
that can't control that and you have his weight,
and I think that moment is super intimate between you two
because he needs you, physically needs you to do that,
but also because you can feel that difference.
I mean, Chris and I were roommates before,
but we were literally bed mates for that first year
'cause Chris would oftentimes have trouble sleeping
and it was helpful if you had to scratch an itch,
or if you had to move his arm in a certain area.
Uh, it was kind of like a special club of all the guys
who would help out Chris
and we always used to play this game,
"Who in this room has slept with Chris Norton?"
"Who in this room has slept in the same bed?"
And it was half of the guys in the room,
like, "Yeah, I've done the caregiver stint."
So at first it was just like,
you know, we have too many people even to help out.
Obviously, school was really tough at first,
I was taking 12 credits,
I was trying to be part of the football team.
I just wanna talk to you guys about being able to compete.
There's nothing I miss more than competition.
[announcer] Honorary pro-captain Chris Norton.
[crowd cheering]
[Del] I think a lot of what makes Chris what he is,
was his passion for football
and I think that that showed in how he played
and it shows now in, you know, how he still feels about the game.
When you go and ask him about that play, he says
if he had to go back and do it all over again, he would.
That to me is one of the most telling statements about him.
I know Chris was super passionate about
being a Luther football player,
and so for us it was like, we can go win for Chris.
I mean, that's all we can do at this point.
[Chris] It's such a huge transition to try to do schoolwork
and reading and tests, papers.
It was a lot. I was going from early morning to late at night,
but it was so fun, I enjoyed just being there with everybody
and having that sense of normalcy, it was really great.
So little by little, he kept adding things in
and then he started doing workouts on campus
and he had his equipment brought here
and he would let us go and take him to work out
and that turned in from a 20, 30 minute ordeal
to twice a day, two, three hour ordeal.
It was pretty incredible because
you kept thinking, okay, we're gonna hit a wall
at a certain point and he never did.
To the point where he started asking to stand up
and try to stand unassisted
and when he first said that was gonna happen,
it was like, we haven't seen this Chris,
like, you're not even supposed to be here, you know?
And then he started doing it, man,
and he's incredible in that way.
[woman 1] Holy cow.
[woman 2] You, Chris Norton.
It's something that I always note to myself,
is like, how many times they would go out of their way
to make sure I was okay,
go out of their way to help me out
when it wasn't convenient for them.
You know, it takes a lot of extra work and effort
to help me out and to get anywhere,
and they were just willing to include me on everything.
They didn't care.
They just made me feel so comfortable about doing anything with them.
People would always go tubing down the river,
it was just kind of the summer thing to do,
we have such cold winters, when we have summer,
we gotta do something.
So, you know, Chris,
I don't remember who came up with the idea,
but Chris wanted to tube down the river.
And with a team of football guys,
we could always get Chris wherever we wanted to go.
There was no such thing as a non-accessible building or space.
So we put that to the test
and the river was probably a little too high at this point,
but we took him inside and got him on this giant
inflatable tube and of course, he burns like crazy.
And so we slathered him in sunscreen,
like 30 football guys just floating down the river
and Chris is just the captain of the armada.
-Are you guys ready? -Yeah.
As soon as we put him in the tube
and we got moving down the river,
it was like the whole thing was just normal.
And you could tell his face relaxed
and he was just happy to be out in the sun
and hanging out with all the guys.
[Alex Peterson] To put all those distractions aside
and be able to just be with the guys for a day
tubing on the river, I mean, that's all you can ask for.
I was very anxious and nervous about dating
because I know there's… I come with a lot of responsibilities.
I need a lot of help with a lot of things that you should be independent on.
And to be with somebody that would have to take on
a lot of that load was nerve-wracking.
I feel like I had high standards for a girl,
I wanted the perfect girl.
I don't want to date anybody until I found that one,
and would I ever find anybody.
And so I kind of went through college not dating,
but then it all made sense to why I was waiting
until I met Emily and when I met Emily, everything changed.
[Emily Summers] I grew up in Muscatine, Iowa,
it's kind of a smaller town, best parents in the world.
They're so caring, loving, taught us so many great values,
which is being kind to others,
doing what you can do to help other people out.
Growing up, I would say in high school,
I started really finding who I was as a person.
I got involved with a lot of different mentoring
and nonprofits and different things like that.
And I just absolutely loved those,
I was completely hooked on doing everything I could
to help other people.
So that's what life is all about, challenges.
-Right. -Absolutely, overcoming those challenges
and you always learn something
from each challenge you go through and each obstacle.
That's right.
I just want to make a difference.
[Oprah] Well, this is what everybody needs to know,
who has lofty goals of making a difference.
Start in your own house.
[audience cheering]
[Emily] So when I was in high school,
I started mentoring a girl named Whittley.
She ended up getting taken out of her home
when she was 11 years old, put in a group home.
The first time she was in the group home, she got to spend Christmas with my family.
And I made her this scrapbook with letters from family,
friends, her teachers. She's sitting there crying,
11 years old, crying, and she goes,
"My heart has never felt like this."
That just broke my heart.
I'm like, "How have you never felt this way?"
You know? How has somebody not loved you enough
to make you feel special, to help you feel love?
So that was a big eye-opening experience for me,
so I decided to then go to school for family services.
I knew that I wanted to do something to help kids,
especially in foster care.
I met Emily at first, a little bit online.
We were on social media and started talking,
saw some pictures of him, thought he was really cute.
I was asking him all these personal questions,
because I'm so curious
and just want to get to know people.
I love trying to figure out who people are on the inside.
Eventually, we just kept conversing
and wanted to meet up.
Let's go, buddy, we gotta meet them downtown.
-I'm not gonna go. -[Richie] We were gonna go out
that night and Chris was like, "Actually, I have a date tonight."
At first we're like, "No, come on, Chris,
come out with your guys,
like, we're gonna have a fun night."
He's like, "No, I'm serious,
I wanna see what this girl's all about."
When Chris was wanting to meet me,
he's like, "Why don't you just come over to this house?
My friends are here." I'm like, "No,
I'm not going over to the house, I don't know you."
So we met in Ames at this hotdog stand, outside.
I had to get a feel for him
and make sure he's a trustworthy guy.
And then I'll never forget when I'm waiting there,
looking for her to meet me at the spot
and I see her facing me, coming across the street.
[gentle music]
I was just in awe.
My jaw probably was hanging down.
I couldn't believe how beautiful she was.
[Emily] So I met him there,
and instantly, we just had a strong connection,
just started talking
and there was never an awkward moment that night.
We just kept talking, it was fun, it was easy.
[Chris] We just hit it off, kept meeting up with each other
and it was just an instant connection.
[gentle music]
[imperceptible]
[Chris] It was love at first sight for me.
It's a real thing.
[Emily] Chris didn't act like he was in a wheelchair.
He was very comfortable with who he was.
I saw Chris as who he was as a person
and eventually I didn't even see the wheelchair.
And just right away, I knew she was an angel,
that this was somebody that was special.
Emily was just super down to earth,
super, like, bubbly and loved life
and she's been great for Chris.
100% didn't see him as anything less than the great guy that he is.
We quickly saw that she was special
and we knew that definitely they had something
from the beginning,
so we welcomed her into our little tribe
and we haven't really looked back ever since.
[Emily] It was about a year before his college graduation
and Chris came up with the idea of wanting to walk
to get his diploma, and when he brought it up to me,
I thought it was a great idea. It's like, "Let's do it, let's make it work."
[Chris] I told her about my goal and she was helping me
make it happen and just instantly was my sidekick.
[Emily] And he starts talking about, "I'm gonna make it public.
I'm going to announce publicly on social media
that I'm going do it." I'm like, "Oh, gosh."
[laughing] This is real.
And so I knew if I could just constantly talk about
this goal that I was gonna have to stay committed to it.
I had to be accountable for this goal,
if I'm gonna talk about it, I gotta back it up.
I'm going to have to bust everything I've got,
every single day and not take a day off.
It's not easy and it doesn't come fast,
but if you keep at it and you keep working hard
each and every day, you know, good results will happen.
[male anchor] And now Chris can stand on his own
and he can walk if somebody is helping him.
He started a foundation, the money purchases
therapy equipment like this, for rehabilitation centers.
Next year, Chris will graduate
and he tells the Des Moines Register he plans to walk to receive his diploma.
[female anchor] He is an incredible young man.
He is, he's making a difference in a lot of people's lives.
And I cannot wait to see him walk across the stage to get that diploma.
Nobody doubts that he will.
Of course, I'm the one that kinda encouraged him on this.
I've told him many times, "Sometimes you have to set goals
when you have no idea how to reach them."
You set a goal, at the time,
I don't know how I'm going to get there, but this is the goal.
[Chris] When I made the goal to walk, I still needed leg braces.
I needed multiple people to help me walk and take steps.
It was a lot of effort to just go a few yards
and it just took a lot of hands and help to do so.
At this point, we had no idea
how he was going to walk across the stage.
He was walking in this big walker.
So he had, like, a lot that he had to do, in order to take steps.
Well, first, Emily was the one that saw this video
of a quadriplegic who was able to walk out
on the football field of a Michigan game.
And she watched the video and she found out
who trained him to go from wheelchair to walking.
And it was this Mike Barwis, at Barwis Methods in Michigan.
So she's like, "We need to go meet him, like,
this guy could really help you out in his program."
I was about to finish school a semester early
and decided that what a great way to just get away
from any kind of distractions with friends or family
or school, and just relocate to Michigan temporarily,
just to focus on my training.
So when Chris first came in, he said, "I really wanna work on walking.
I have the graduation coming up."
He was committed to task, he had a long road to haul…
Significant spasms, uh, inability to maintain balance.
Couldn't really control his contractions properly,
was not in a place to be able to walk,
but was willing to pay the price to do it.
There were three to five hours a day of rigorous work,
both mentally and physically.
You're talking about a guy who everything in his body
and in his mind is telling him to quit
and you're asking him to go 10 more.
It's got to come down to two major things,
God's will and your work,
but you got to put in the work,
'cause he's not just gonna hand it to you.
And it's the same thing, anything great in life you want,
you've gotta earn it.
But the level of commitment that that takes is not ordinary.
It never will be, and nobody can do it for him,
nobody can bail him out.
You can't step in his body and change the circumstance.
The reality is he's gotta bear it.
Chris possesses a fortitude
that most men and women who walk this earth
can only dream of.
And because of that, where he ends up, limitless.
[Emily] When I moved to Michigan with him,
I was his full-time caregiver and helped with everything
for over a year. I was completely taking care of him,
taking care of myself, that was definitely difficult.
Especially when you're in a relationship
with this person, and you have to help them with things.
He doesn't want the help obviously,
he wants to be able to do those things himself.
And then I'm helping him, so it was a little frustrating
sometimes when I felt like he wasn't appreciating it.
We got into arguments about that.
"I just wanna know that what I'm doing matters
and you appreciate it" and all of that, 'cause it was a lot.
[Chris] From sunup to sundown, she was helping me
and it was a lot for her, as anyone can imagine,
it was just nonstop.
Completely just dove in to helping him make this goal possible.
He was working four to five hours every single day.
Sometimes even more, he would work out,
have this long four-hour workout and he'd come home
and wanna do like two hours more.
Shortly before, we got my brother's high school gown,
his graduation gown
and I would wear the dress I was gonna wear.
So we would practice walking and make sure, like,
we, you know, had the right shoes and everything.
I feel like I'm a wizard from Harry Potter.
[laughing]
[Emily speaks indistinctly]
Couple of weeks before, I was stressing out,
I was freaking out, I felt like I was regressing
and things were getting worse.
Was I going to be able to do it?
You're right there, come on, pull it through.
You're so close, come on.
[Chris groans]
You wanna take a second?
And I remember him, like, he just seemed so disappointed
and so sad and was getting teary-eyed, too,
and he's just like, "Emily, I don't know if I can do this.
I don't know if this is gonna work,
if I'll be able to walk across the stage.
I don't know how I can make this happen."
And for me, I'm like instantly like, "Chris, you can do this.
We're gonna do what we can, we're gonna make this work."
[Mike] All of that pressure will fall on your shoulders at some point.
And when it does, you need somebody to help you stand
and we had a conversation, I saw him struggling.
I saw his personality change a little bit
where he was, you could tell he was sad.
He was feeling a little withdrawn, he was a little depressed
and he was struggling with what was about to happen
and whether or not he could achieve it.
It's no different than somebody who spends their entire life
wrestling and they make the Olympics
and now they're going, "What do I do now?
What if I don't win?"
What if you do?
You just got to go at it as hard as you possibly can
and let the chips fall where they may.
And if you're willing to do everything you possibly can do,
then you have absolutely no regrets.
If you're unwilling, for the rest of your life,
you'll think back and wonder,
"Could I have been greater?"
Because greatness isn't in me, it's not in the air,
it's in him.
Truth is, all he's gotta do is get it out.
[gentle music]
[Emily] We came back to Iowa for the graduation walk.
Chris had another little plan, that I didn't know about,
the day before he walks across the stage.
He told me that we are going to get an interview
so that I was gonna be dressed nice and look nice.
He said we had to go to a restaurant 'cause the lady there he was close with
and she was going to give him a graduation gift.
We were gonna go pick it up and then do the interview.
So we went there, then she led us into another room.
She's like, "Oh, it's back here." I'm like, "Huh?"
That's a little weird, but all right.
She's like, "It's big." I'm like, "Okay."
I started lining things up, like having her family,
my family and friends there.
I wanted to propose her and surprise her
by having rose petals on the ground saying,
"Will you marry me?"
-[Emily] Oh, my gosh. -Come in here.
[indistinct talking]
There's no doubt in my mind.
You're the most amazing person I ever met in my life.
Will you please marry me and share the rest of my life together?
[Emily] Yes.
I could not believe that Chris was gonna add that into it
when he had all of this stress of the graduation walk,
like he was gonna add the wedding proposal as well.
So it was such a special moment,
we, like, celebrated it for a while with the proposal
and went to dinner and everything, hung out.
And then it was like, go back and get prepared for tomorrow
'cause we've been working for this for the last year.
What was incredible was that person that
was gonna walk me across the stage would be my fiancée Emily.
I went to that graduation walk knowing
I busted myself for years to make this happen
and if I trip and fall, so be it.
Graduation day, we wake up extremely early in the morning
because the longer I'm upright and, like, in my chair
and, like, active, the better I'll do later on in the day.
Sometimes his body's, like, more shutdown
and it's… He can't take a step and he really struggles.
So are we gonna get up there and he's gonna stand up
and not be able to take a step?
[Chris] Yeah, just trying to get my mind in the right place
but I was so nervous.
It was like a game day where I'm just like,
had so much pent up energy and anxiousness
and I was just in the zone.
[Emily] Obviously, there are gonna be a lot of people there
and you only get one shot at it.
And I was like, "Oh, my gosh, that'd be terrible."
I would feel so bad for him, if he wasn't able to like,
at least take a few steps to get his diploma.
-[man speaking indistinctly] -[students cheering]
[Chris] I remember approaching that, the ramp.
[man] Madison Noel, magna cum laude.
[Chris] Getting up on the ramp and then getting set up,
just being like, let's go, I'm ready to do this.
[man] Christopher Norton.
[audience cheering]
[imperceptible]
[Emily] As he's taking a few steps, I look up at Chris
and I'm just so happy and so relieved,
and then just completely in the moment with Chris.
[audience continues cheering]
[audience cheering louder]
[Emily] When you see someone that you love so much,
work super hard and then he's making the hard work
pay off and he's making his goal and dream a reality,
like, there's nothing better.
[audience cheering]
[Deb] It was just such, it was just pure joy.
When he was hurt, will he be able to go back to college?
Will he graduate? Will he meet somebody?
I mean, everything I had just worried about,
it was all, it all happened.
And that was that moment.
Everything he'd gone through
and all the battles he's had to face
and to see that moment where he had worked so hard for this,
and to see it come true, it was just incredible.
[Mike] Watching that young man walk across there,
come on, you can do whatever you want to do,
but seeing a young man take steps,
with his future bride, and accept his diploma,
when the world said it was impossible,
that's pretty awesome.
[Chris] News stations from around the world, magazines, newspapers,
like everything just flooded my emails, asking for the story.
And it was just like, it happened so fast.
After a devastating accident, he vowed to walk again
and he knew where he wanted to do it, too,
his college graduation.
[interviewer] This'll be the most inspirational story you hear all day long.
A college football player paralyzed from the neck down
in his freshman year, does the incredible
just four years later at graduation, watch this.
[audience cheering]
Something big happened leading up to that video
that we just saw. Chris, did you pop the question?
[Chris] You know what, I did, I was so nervous,
but I asked the love of my life to marry me.
[interviewer] What's your goal for this year?
Well, now after my graduation walk,
I guess do a walk for our wedding.
We'll have to get that in motion
and I'm always looking for the next step
and always keep progressing. My journey's far from over.
We thought maybe the flurry was over
and we get a call from Good Morning America
and they say, "We wanna fly you out, tonight."
[Robin Roberts] Four years later,
the 23-year-old takes the stage at his graduation,
leaving his wheelchair behind
and proposing just one day before his momentous walk.
The couple preparing now for their most important steps yet,
down the aisle.
Aw, it is a pleasure and an honor to welcome
Chris Norton and his fiancée, Emily Summers.
Yeah, your mom and dad are here.
How proud are you of your son?
Extremely proud, we go back four and a half years ago
when all he could do is nod his head up and down.
So we've known how hard he's worked
to get to that point on the graduation stage.
We had no idea that it would go viral, or that we'd be on national television.
[Chris] Graduation walk just took it
to a whole other level of just inspiring millions worldwide,
not just locally and through my state.
[Emily] So that was really cool and getting messages from people
about, like, "You've helped me believe in love again."
And, um, "I've been really struggling with this
and I know I can get through it
and I'm gonna continue to work hard and you've inspired me."
Like that was the best part about it, for sure.
This is what I was waiting for early on those hospital days, when I kept praying,
asking God, like, "What could be the meaning behind this injury?"
To seeing it coming to fruition was amazing.
I never really knew much about the foster care system
and what that entailed, but Emily has such a huge heart for it.
She's so compassionate, she loves children,
especially children who have come from difficult situations
and difficult circumstances.
And so she introduced this foster care idea to me
when someone she mentored young a long time ago,
at high school, really needed a place to go
in order for her to graduate.
I go to Chris, I'm like, "Chris, Whittley just called me,
she has nowhere else to go,
she's gonna go to a group home and age out of foster care.
I cannot let that happen.
Can we please become foster parents
and do what we can to help her?"
She already talked to me about it that,
if I'm gonna marry her, that we have to do foster care.
And I said, "That's fine." But I did not expect to
get thrown into it right away before we even married
and to not only foster any child, but a 17-year-old child.
[Whittley] Emily and Chris did say yes to doing foster care,
but that came with agreements.
I, one, had to show them that I could work on getting better,
show them I could work on learning to love myself.
I could let go of the past.
That was very hard for me.
I didn't believe that I deserved love
until Emily and Chris did foster care for me.
♪ Happy birthday to you ♪
♪ Happy birthday ♪
[Emily] And when Whittley moved out and I go to Chris,
I'm like, "Chris, I wanna continue to do foster care. Let's just do it."
I get a message from our licensing agent,
that they have four girls coming into care.
-Um… eight and under. -Four.
Not three, four.
Well, I figured out that I actually knew a few of them from a place I used to work.
And when I figured that out, in my mind, my mind was set.
I'm not separating these siblings.
They're gonna stay together and they're going to be in our house.
Chris, what were your thoughts?
I was like, "What? That's scary, I don't know these kids."
Okay, taking in four kids
and we already have one with some different challenges.
Different challenges.
Seemed a little crazy, okay?
[Chris] I was completely scared, I'm thinking this is insane.
We going from one to five is a big jump.
[Emily] Yeah.
[girls giggling]
[girls screaming]
-[Emily babbling] -[girl laughing]
-[Emily] Whatever you do, don't smile. -[giggling]
-[girls] I belong. -[Emily] I belong.
-[girl] I'm loved. -[group] I'm loved.
-[girl] I'm special. -[group] I'm special.
It's an incredible experience, all you have to do is really love them
and give them a great environment and they just love you back.
They need that love, they need that home.
And it's just unbelievable to give them that opportunity
and I'm so thankful that we're foster parents.
I thought what a crazy idea, like, what are we getting ourselves into?
But it's been nothing but rewarding
and there's so many kids who need a home
and to be able to provide a home, it's worth it.
[both sing] ♪ You'll never know, dear How much I love you ♪
♪ Please don't take my sunshine away ♪
We are here at Abaco Golf Club
and this is where we're getting married.
Um, we finally have set a date, you guys, April 21st.
-Finally, Mom, we did it. We did it. -Seriously, she's been waiting
for a while, it's been a long time.
We've been engaged for a little too long, I'd say,
but it's all right, we're ready now.
We were engaged for the perfect amount of time.
-That's true. -Everybody, so…
[Chris] So that's really tough for me to walk with someone at my hip
versus being in front where they can adjust my weight,
side to side, forward and back.
At the side, there's a lot of things up to chance
and so that's been quite the learning curve
to try to figure out and maneuver,
how can you even walk with someone at your hip
that's not very stable like myself.
So there's a lot of work that needs to be done,
but I'm working at it all the time.
And be in that exact spot that we're gonna get married
and Chris is gonna walk me down the aisle, it was very surreal.
Um, it made things just like, okay, this is happening.
Chris, Alex asks, "What motivates you to continue
working day after day?" It's a good one.
When you're passionate about just getting better and improving,
you know that takes a lot of hard work
and it's an everyday thing.
So if I want to get the results, I want to walk down the aisle,
then I have to put in the work today it's not just gonna come naturally.
So that's just something that I just care about.
You want to make it happen.
You're gonna do what it takes to make it happen.
Work as hard as you can each and every day.
That's something five times a week for three hours,
I'm still training. Although it's been
almost seven years out from my injury,
it's still important to me
and it's important to Emily, too.
I'm gonna walk her down the aisle some way, somehow,
and we're gonna go seven yards.
And I wanna walk with her side by side.
[gentle music]
[Emily] We are gonna get married in eight months.
We can't do it right now at all.
We can't do it.
I guess that's having faith,
is setting a goal and you don't know
how you're gonna get there and I know they're working out the details
to make sure it happens and I can't wait.
I'm excited because I'll know he's thrown
everything he's got into doing it and making it happen.
Personally, I don't care.
If he wants to take one step or two steps
or just stand up or whatever he wants to do, it's fine.
I know it means a lot to him, but he's got… he has his future wife.
I mean, he's going to be married, to me that is the…
I don't care about the walking at that point.
-How you doing? -Good morning.
You must be Nathan.
-So nice to meet you. -Nice to meet you.
Thank you for being here, man, we're so excited.
You know what would be really neat on this?
If we can run this down, how cool would this be, though?
If we could find one she loves
and then you could gift that to her and put it in your home.
When it's all done, you're like,
"Hey, we got married underneath the chandelier,
and now that's a chandelier for your house."
Man, you're speaking her language. I need you.
We'll be putting down a custom floor that we had shipped in, custom made,
and we're actually vinyling the floor,
so every yard will have a word from their Bible verse.
Almost it's unexplainable
and we wanna just give them that moment to tell their story
and it's gonna be powerful.
Maybe, arguably the most powerful wedding we've ever been a part of.
[Chris] I think something that I've really talked
to other couples, married couples,
is that they always tell me and Emily,
"Enjoy the moment and just really try to take it all in
and take a moment for yourself to really reflect on this experience."
So typically, best man holds the rings. What's the trust level here?
I can do it, I got this.
I'm gonna wear both of them.
Coach them up tonight.
The rehearsal was surreal because it was the first,
kind of event of the wedding weekend.
And it just became really visceral to us
and like a concrete moment, whereas leading up to the wedding
it was all just kind of an idea,
and then we got there and we looked around and we realized,
wow, this is happening.
Chris is gonna walk down the aisle,
we're all here together, we finally did it.
And it was just kind of a moment of
so many things like relief, joy,
excitement, people from his community, from Bondurant, people from college,
people from the football team, people from Florida,
people all around are coming together
and their one connection is they're celebrating
Chris and Emily. It was a really special moment.
I think it's beautiful to reflect and it's amazing to think about,
just seven years ago and just how far I've come
in that time and to know that,
the power of faith, the power of family and friends,
and just all coming together, what it can lead to.
It literally led from the worst day of my life
to the best day of my life.
[Deb] I think the one thing that's touching my heart
are family and friends that are here.
They were with us this whole journey
and they're here to celebrate this milestone.
It was really awesome to be in the room with Chris
and actually put the suit on him,
you know, helping him with his shoes and his jacket
and vest and everything and making it perfect.
You know, he's a little bit of a perfectionist, too,
so it was a lot of fun to be able to get him, you know,
looking sharp and ready to roll.
[Deb] You know, when Chris was hurt and we were at the hospital
and it hit me, you know, is he going to get married?
Is he going to find someone? I mean, what's his life gonna look like?
'Cause we just didn't know then.
And I wish I could have seen this day,
because that would have given me so much comfort and so much…
[sighs in relief]
It's going to be okay, but I didn't know at the time,
so you have to have faith and, you know, we just hoped
and we prayed for that and here we are, it's wonderful.
[Whittley] Emily and Chris's wedding day
was supposed to be their most special day,
but I feel like it was the most special day of my life.
Seeing them have true love made me feel hope
that I would be able to find love someday.
I think something I've been really thinking a lot about,
knowing that no matter what we go through in life,
we are gonna get through it together.
So for me to know that, I have so much peace.
Hello, how are you?
What do you think, sweetheart?
[Chris] I really consider her to be the real life Wonder Woman.
She can just do it all.
She brings so much hope and love to me and to everyone she encounters.
And it's just to know that I'm marrying
that kind of special person
and that together, that we're gonna be a great team
and that no matter what happens in life,
we're stronger together and we'll always be together.
Give him a goal, he's gonna crush it. Seven yards, nothing.
You know, that's just his mentality.
[gentle music]
[Chris] I think what got me the most
when seeing Emily come down the aisle towards me,
that I'm the lucky guy that gets to marry her.
She's committing herself to me and myself to her.
It was just, it was overwhelming
to think this is actually happening.
[sweeping orchestral music plays]
Based on the vows you have shared before God
and these witnesses, by the authority committed to me
as a representative of Jesus Christ and his church,
I now pronounce you husband and wife.
Chris, you may kiss your bride.
[cheering]
[Chris] Over the course of our lives, one way or another,
we all get hit and knocked down.
What I discovered is that we all have the ability
to stand back up and to stand back up
stronger than ever before.
My spinal cord injury
didn't completely ruin my life as I imagined it would.
[dramatic music]
In fact, I found a life and a purpose that's worth living for.
I'd like to challenge each and every one of you
to stand up to the obstacles and challenges you're facing.
To take it one step at a time.
When I hear people say
they can't, what they really mean is they won't.
You know, what I've learned the last seven years
are applicable to each and every one of you.
Anything is possible.
[gentle music]
What do you want for Christmas, the biggest thing that you said?
-To be adopted. -What would that mean to you?
It would mean that I actually belong to someone.
Guess what's on December 11, 2018?
-What? -We're gonna adopt you.
We already have court scheduled.
We got it all planned.
I'm going to cry.
♪ There's a road ahead And I'll walk down it ♪
-I love you guys. -We love you.
♪ I've got so many places to go ♪
You guys think right now, we're here to share a story,
but it's actually much more than that.
In only eight days, we are adopting you.
You will be our daughters, we will be your mom and dad forever.
♪ You're a miracle I need and forever family ♪
♪ Now I know What is in front of me ♪
♪ So I'll step into my destiny ♪
♪ And when I'm losing sight ♪
♪ I know that you're my way back home ♪
[yelling]
[Chris] Go, go, go.
♪ I couldn't only know ♪
♪ You gotta put one foot In front of the other ♪
♪ I got two hands We can carry each other ♪
♪ Ooh, you're the miracle I need ♪
♪ My forever family ♪
♪ Better than I was or I'll ever be ♪
♪ Better you and me ♪
♪ I love our family ♪
Daddy, the first thing when you get your license,
you're gonna drive us to get us ice cream.
That's right.
Hey, girls.
[girl] What?
Guess what we're doing?
[girl] What?
We're going to Disney World.
[girls screaming]
♪ You're the miracle I need ♪
♪ You gotta put one foot In front of the other ♪
♪ I got two hands We can carry each other ♪
♪ Ooh, you're the miracle I need ♪
♪ My forever family ♪
We love, all of us, all of us, we are the Norton family.
[people clapping]
I gotta go run some errands,
Emily's got me running to Target, so peace out.
Talk to you guys later.
It's been real.