Traverse City Record-Eagle

2011 Cherry Festival

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  • Grant Forrester, right, of Traverse City, and Phil Thiel, a friend visiting from Atlanta, share a laugh during a training walk at the Grand Traverse Mall. Forrester, a quadriplegic, plans to walk the 5K in today's Festival of Races, part of the National Cherry Festival. Record-Eagle/Jodee Taylor

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  • Grant Forrester, of Traverse City, walks at the Grand Traverse Mall. Record-Eagle/Jodee Taylor

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July 9, 2011

Quadriplegic to walk 5K today

BY JODEE TAYLOR jtaylor@record-eagle.com

TRAVERSE CITY — A little more than a mile. That's the farthest walk Grant Forrester has ever taken.

But he's determined to eclipse that distance today, and vowed to walk the 5K in the Festival of Races, part of the National Cherry Festival.

Forrester is a quadriplegic.

The West Senior High graduate trained "nonstop" for 13 months, he said, from walking in his neighborhood off East Silver Lake Road to rounds of walking at Grand Traverse Mall.

He's lost 40 pounds and fended off bursitis and tendonitis. He'll use a walker in the 3.1-mile race and plans to start a half-hour earlier than the rest of the field, about 7 a.m.

Forrester, 24, has been a spinal cord quadriplegic, or spastic quadriplegic, since he was in a car accident at 15 months old.

"The only bone he broke was his skull, from ear to ear," said his mother, Lauren Leitner.

He walked up to get his diploma in 2005 when he graduated from high school. In May he graduated from Adult Community Experience, a life skills course taught by the Traverse Bay Area Intermediate School District.

"When he sticks his mind to something, he'll do it," said one of his ACE teachers, John Sandula. "He's a really, really neat person, a strong-willed person."

"It's very hard for him to walk, but he's determined," said his friend Michael King.

"I've said he can ride the chair for a little bit if he gets tired," said Leitner, his mother. "But he doesn't want to have anything to do with that."

"There are two words I do not use," Forrester said. "'Can' and 'can't.' If people say they can, it's too easy to give up. If they say they can't, they don't even try.

"The only word I say is 'will.'"

Forrester expects to have 30 or more supporters with him on the walk, many of them sporting "Team 5K Grant" T-shirts.

He took a training walk this week at the mall with a high school friend, Phil Thiel, who's here from Atlanta.

"It takes Grant close to an hour to walk a mile and it takes most people 20 minutes and they won't do it," Thiel said, as he helped Forrester maneuver corners in the walker.

Leitner said Grant's not only determined, but pretty independent. The single mom, with two younger sons, gets him out of bed, bathed, dressed and in his chair, and he goes about his day, which includes doing volunteer data entry for the American Red Cross and the Cherry Festival.

Still, she's nervous about the walk.

"If he does four-tenths of a mile, the sweat is pouring off his head. But he's going to give it his best shot."

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Special to the Record-Eagle/Susan Melton
A National Cherry Festival goer hits new heights at the Open Space.

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