Fletcher Cleaves

On April 26th, we had a guest speaker join us named Fletcher Cleaves who was living independently with a cervical spinal cord injury. Fletcher grew up with a love of football and that's where he put all of his hard work, dedication, and passion. Finally a young Fletcher received a scholarship to play football at Lambuth University. However, all of Fletcher's training could not have prepared him for the night a texting driver would run him of the road leading to the crash that would change his life and take his ability to walk.

Several years later I meet Fletcher during my time in occupational therapy school and I see this man in front of me with a huge personality and even bigger sense of humor. He educated us on his injury and gave us a look into what a day would look like for a person with his level spinal cord injury. Fletcher also made a really incredible point when he was discussing the difficulty he had finding a wheel chair accessible apartment and I feel that is something that should be better advocated for throughout communities.
Fletcher doesn't allow his injury to get him down and he sees it as just a stepping stone in his long life to live. I was lucky enough to be able to sit and listen first hand to his perspective and I feel that this was instrumental in our learning of SCI's in the classroom and being able to see it first hand.

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