Grad Sheds Wheelchair, Walks
When Erin Fakan walked across the stage to pick up her high school diploma on Sunday, she shocked a lot of people — including her parents.
Erin, 19, has spina bifida, and has been confined to a wheelchair, for the most part, since fourth grade.
But, when her name was called at her graduation ceremony, she stunned everyone by getting up and, with the help of a brace, walking about 150 feet to waiting school officials.
Erin decided in April that she was going give her family the very special graduation gift.
The Hinckley, Ohio teen told only a physical therapist, her guidance counselor, and an aunt about her intentions.
What motivated her to try the special feat?
"From all the family support that I've had throughout my whole life," she explained to co-anchor Rene Syler on The Early Show Thursday, "I thought that would be a great gift I could give back to them."
Her mother, Michele, was dumbfounded.
"(I had) no idea (what she was up to). It was very much a surprise," she told Syler.
Ironically, it was Michele who couldn't stand at that moment.
"As everyone stood up," she recalled, "I sat down, because I couldn't believe it. I thought I was going to fall down.
"Everybody was crying. Her brothers were crying. People were coming up after the graduation and still crying. It was very moving, very touching."
In fourth grade, Michele says, surgeries and weight gain made it difficult for Erin to walk.On occasion, Michele says, Erin walks very short distances around the house with the aid of the brace, but never anywhere nearly as far as she walked on the stage.
Making the achievement even more remarkable, Erin told Syler, she did it almost all by herself: "I worked at home on my own to practice. I have worked with physical therapists throughout my life trying to get back on my feet. So I had worked with a couple of them. But this I did on my own, pretty much. I had been practicing every day for about a month, right before graduation.
"I was a little bit shocked that I was able to do it the whole way, because I thought, 'Well, maybe I'll just do it partway or some of the way, but I actually made it the whole way."
What was going through her mind?
"I was pretty much (thinking) one foot in front of the other, and that I could make it. And it was, at first I was kind of nervous. But when I finished, I was kind of like excited, and glad that I was able to do it."
Michele says Erin "wants to go to college. She wants to be an accountant. She wants to learn to drive. That's our goal for the summer.
"Erin can pretty much do whatever she wants. Erin's got a lot of determination. And whatever she sets her mind to do, she goes after that goal and she usually reaches it. She's a very determined young lady."