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Highlands Today

Stories Of Survival Inspire Us To Be Thankful

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Highlands Today Staff

Published: November 27, 2007

Every now and then we come across heartwarming stories of survival and beating the odds that put our own problems into perspective.

Like that of Sebring High School junior Cody Breen.

Breen looks like a regular kid. He plays the trumpet in the Sebring Marching Band and has dreams of graduating from high school and going to college. Just like many other kids his age.

But when Breen wakes up, his days are shrouded in darkness like his nights. They have been ever since he was born. Breen has been blind since birth.

Is Breen bitter about his congenital disability? No.

He describes it as a regular speed bump.

"You can't really miss what you never had," Breen told the Highlands Today. If that is not dignity at its best, what is, one wonders?

Throughout our community we find individuals like Breen who have survived in a world tougher than ours and have made it –– with a smile.

Mike Eldred, a developmentally disabled man, has owned a sweeping business since 1981.

Most early mornings Eldred is the only person on Main Street in Avon Park, sweeping the sidewalks and public areas of the city.

Seventeen businesses pay Eldred to tidy up. Cigarette butts, fast-food wrappers and discarded water bottles all end up properly disposed on a cart that Eldred pushes from one end of town to the other.

His efforts have not gone unrecognized.

Eldred recently won the Skeet Norley Award, a statewide honor given by the Florida Arc. His business was also recognized by the Avon Park Chamber of Commerce as business of the year.

Stories like Breen's and Eldred's remind us what is important in life and how we've got to be thankful for what we've got.

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