Angela Madsen (R.I.P.)

      This post is interesting and should be inspirational. It is not about me. Even though we are living during the time of the Great Flu, many of us probably do too much whining (or whinging or even whingeing) about problems or issues that result in inconveniences that are often very minor ones. My toe hurts, for example, and it is raining, but this is not about me.

   It is about Angela Madsen and she was the one who is interesting and can inspire us to be a little tougher. I write ‘was’ because I only learned about her in her recent obituary. She died at the age of 60, alone in the Pacific where she had been rowing for about 60 days. Her legs didn't work. She had no breasts.

   The obituary begins this way and only gets worse:

Angela Madsen was a healthy young Marine who was playing basketball when she suffered a serious back injury in 1981. When she had back surgery a dozen years later, at 33, she woke up paralyzed from the waist down. She lost her job, her partner cleaned out her bank account and left her, and for a time she lived on the streets, sleeping in her wheelchair in front of Disneyland.

In case you can’t get behind the firewall I will itemize some of the other difficulties she faced and provide additional sources. She got pregnant while still a junior in high school. Apart from the injury and the botched surgery and the paraplegia, she broke a leg and some ribs in a car accident. She fell from her wheelchair onto the tracks of the San Francisco, subway, injuring her brain, but “even cancer and a double mastectomy did not slow her down.”

  None of those things slowed her down. Apart from the Pacific she also rowed across the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans and around the United Kingdom. She also won gold medals as a Paralympian in rowing and other medals in events such as throwing a javelin and putting a shot. In short, she is worth reading about and we should all complain less and do more.

Sources:

   The obituary: "Angela Madsen, Paralympian Rower, Dies on Solo Pacific Voyage at 60, Katharine Q. Seelye, New York Times, June 30, 2020.

   See also: "Paralympian Angela Madsen Found Dead While Trying to Row From California to Hawaii, " Allen Kim, CNN, June 26, and  “Paralympic Rowing Star Dies During Solo Crossing of Pacific, "Tom Lutz, The Guardian, June 24, 2020.

   Apparently Madsen went overboard in an attempt to fix a problem as a typhoon approached. She was found attached to her boat. Details are provided at the website The Row of Life and on Explorersweb.com - "What Happened to Angela Madsen?".

  This was not her first problem at sea. In one account a huge container ship almost resulted in her drowning during a rescue attempt. There are several YouTube accounts about her. She is typically poised and well-spoken. See, for example, the interview with Jennifer Longdon - "Angela Madsen: Rowing Against the Wind."

The Bonus

   Another tough woman without legs is also in the news these days. Senator Tammy Duckworth (Illinois) lost hers during the Iraq War as a pilot of a Black Hawk helicopter. She also was not slowed down and became a U.S. Senator and mother - the first to give birth while serving in the Senate. 

   She was attacked by Tucker Carlson on Fox News, apparently for hating America. I gather her husband doesn't know that since he is also an Iraq War veteran.

See: "Tammy Duckworth Confronts Nativist Smears From Tucker Carlson," Reid J. Epstein," New York Times, July 8, 2020.

  For more about Senator Duckworth see the Wikipedia entry and her Senate biography.