Broken Eyes, Unbroken Spirit: The story of a national blind golf champion

David Meador
Beyond Vision (2011)
ISBN 9780982965207
Reviewed by Joseph Yurt for Reader Views (4/11)

 

In David Meador’s Prologue to his autobiography, “Broken Eyes, Unbroken Spirit,” he recalls a warm memory of an outing with his high school buddies to attend their first college football game. He paints a vivid recollection that reflects his pleasant, happy-go-lucky life in a small Illinois town. Many readers will immediately experience a fondness for the imagery Meador creates. Then, in Chapter One, without warning, Meador’s lucky life and the reader’s mellow emotions hit the wall with horrific impact, leaving both author and reader changed for life.

One night, when he was 18- years-old, Meador’s “dream ride” with a local police officer on what would have normally been a routine, uneventful patrol of the small town, turned into a high speed chase that left the police cruiser a mangled wreck and Meador without his sight forever. Meador’s rendering of that occurrence is so vividly drawn that I felt as though I was riding in the cruiser with him. “Telephone poles and houses flew by as we sped up and kicked the car to its peak acceleration, cold wind buffeted the windshield. Revolving red lights reflected like strobes, bouncing off trees, fences and buildings in the night...Tires screamed, Rubber burned. We were thrown into a terrifying skid - a skid that ripped us irrevocably from one life to another.”

The new life into which Meador was thrust was one of unimaginable change, hardship and struggles exacerbated by limitations, pain and frustrations. More recently, Meador felt like “My gosh, here we go again,” as he twice did battle with cancer and beat it, although that’s not quite the way he describes the outcome of his latest struggle. “I would never say that I beat cancer. The truth is it beat me up one side and down the other. I just survived it.” Indeed, he has not only survived all the obstacles he has encountered in his changed world, on some occasions he has soared high above them. And, as it was for me when reading Chapter One’s description of the car chase, Meador writes in an unassuming way that made me feel as if I were sinking and soaring with him in every chapter that followed.

For every obstacle, Meador has conjured up a way around it, sometimes creating near miracles. He became proficient in Braille and mobility skills. He earned degrees from Southern Illinois University and Loyola University of Chicago, and began a successful twenty-year sales career with Northwestern Mutual Life in Nashville. In his teenage years, he was an avid golfer prior to his blindness. He continued playing golf, becoming a National Blind Golf Golf Champion, a recent winner of the Masters of Blind Golf, and to date has three holes-in-one. Meador also developed a reputation as a renowned motivational speaker and he continues to inspire audiences today.

Phil Bredsen, Governor of Tennessee from 2003 to March 2011 writes, “I have known David Meador for a couple of decades now... David Meador’s life is a gift to us all if we have the courage and sense to receive it.” The same can be said of “Broken Eyes, Unbroken Spirit.”

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