Cancer of the spine at a very young age left Bill Bogdan with a spinal cord injury that would change his life forever. Because he was young, adjusting to becoming a wheelchair user came easier to him than it might have had it occurred when he was an adult.
I met Bill when I was doing a Diveheart demonstration at Shriners Hospital for Children with disabilities and the staff at the hospital. I was using their therapy pool and was talking about the benefits of scuba therapy when Bill rolled up in his wheelchair to listen.
Bill was a patient at Shriners Hospital in Chicago when he was young and the doctors and staff helped him rehabilitate after they removed the cancer from his spine and saved his life. As he got older, he became a mentor for many of the new patients at the hospital. Bill was fascinated with my presentation because he was already a certified scuba diver.
We hit it off right away. Bill soon became a volunteer, ambassador and Diveheart advocate, eventually joining the Diveheart board of directors. When I met Bill, his children were small, but his vision was to someday get them all scuba certified so that he could go on dive trips with them and all be equal underwater.
I trained Bill’s first daughter years ago and she went on to become an accomplished scuba diver, even using her skills to dive in Alaska while attending University of Alaska in Juneau and majoring in Alaskan aquaculture, mariculture and scientific scuba diving.
This year Bill’s younger son and daughter were now of the age to get scuba certified and join Bill, his wife, Laura, and their oldest daughter on a family scuba adventure trip with Diveheart.
This summer I was able to get them certified in a local quarry in Kankakee, Illinois.
Bill’s dream of getting out of his wheelchair and experiencing zero gravity underwater with his family was about to come true. Bill had no idea that his journey and dream was about to become international news as the Rotary Magazine was doing a story about Diveheart and focused on Bill’s story as a major part of the feature.
Reaching over 1.2 million Rotarians around the world, Bill’s story will become an inspiration to people around the world of all abilities.
