Welcome to JFK in The Enduring Secret.

I'm your host, Jeff Crudell.

Hello everyone and welcome back to the podcast.

Today's episode is episode 45.

Music Ed Hoffman never heard a busy street like that.

Ed Hoffman never heard a busy street like that. All of us take so much for granted.

I was in my late 20s when I got the news one day. My cousin Michael had passed rather suddenly.

It was a heart attack. He was only a few years older than I was, but his fragile body had finally given out.

He was severely handicapped, but only in a physical sense.

He suffered from cerebral palsy, a traumatic birth with a cord wrapped around his neck,

precious oxygen gone for precious minutes, just enough to alter a life forever.

Michael Bell was his name. I didn't know Michael all that well. My parents moved from Ashtabula,

Ohio when I was just a year old. He was born and raised and died right in that area. The rest of his

immediate family, that is, my cousins and my aunt, were born there and still live there today.

It's home for them. But what I did know of Michael, I learned at a young age in the few summer

moments that mom and dad brought me back to Ohio. They did that to remain

connected with the family that we had left behind as they themselves began a new season of living in

Florida in the 1960s. What I knew and experienced about Michael in those few summer visits had a

profound effect on me. What he did in his short 30 years or so

on this earth taught me even more. taught me a lot about personal determination when you have a

handicap, and all of us have some form of handicap, from the mildest of things to the most severe, like Michael. He taught me that you can still

make a difference. You don't have to succumb. In fact, you can thrive, especially when you get the

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