Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

'Intelligent young man' won't give up

Disabled since 9, he works (seen him at Home Depot?), goes to college and has two big goals.

By WAVENEY ANN MOORE
Published July 12, 2006

ST. PETERSBURG - He walks with a swaying, hopping gait, his body maimed and his speech labored, but Marshall Canfall shuns sympathy.

In 1979 he was hit by a car on Halloween. Just 9, he was severely injured and remained in a coma for almost two months at All Children's Hospital. A hospital spokesman called his recovery "miraculous" at the time.

"I was in the hospital off and on for two years," he recalled recently. "I had to learn everything over again, how to eat, talk, everything."

Canfall, now 36, said he holds no grudges toward the woman who drove the car that hit him. "I choose not to get angry, because then if I get angry, then it would take the focus off my life, so I just choose to live positively and uplift myself," he said.

In the years since, Canfall has graduated from Pinellas Park High School and attended Pinellas Technical Education Centers in St. Petersburg. Now a student at St. Petersburg College, he wants to teach exceptional students "because those are the classes I was put into," he said of his postaccident years. "I believe I can relate to students with special needs. ... I think education plays a very big part in overcoming adversity."

Canfall drives, swims, runs, works out regularly at a gym and has a first-degree black belt in tae kwon do. On Thursday he will have worked with Home Depot for 13 years. In 1999, he was named employee of the year at the store at 2300 22nd Ave. N.

Nancy Clues, the store's assistant manager, said Canfall is a valuable employee who ably balances work and college. "He's been at this store so long that customers know him. They'll come in and say 'hi' or they will ask for him," Clues said.

"The customers that know him well don't see his disability. There are customers that see his disability and don't see that there is an intelligent young man under that disability and don't have the patience. He does struggle with that, but he tries to make light of it."

Diane Reese, in charge of the learning support center at SPC's Gibbs campus, praised Canfall's perseverance. He has taken advantage of the center's tutoring and computer services, she said.

"I think what everybody respects a lot is how dedicated he's been. He's reliable and with the challenges he has, to think he doesn't get downhearted," Reese said.

Davie Gill, a counselor with Brother to Brother, an organization at the college that helps Canfall with registration, textbooks and whatever he needs to succeed, is similarly impressed. "He's really focused and progressing through school," Gill said. "He's taken something that's happened to him and is trying to turn it to the positive for other people."

Five years ago, Canfall became a volunteer with the Pinellas County Schools Speakers Bureau. He talks to students about traffic safety and accident prevention.

He bought a home but has had financial difficulties and faced foreclosure. He said he received about $18,000 in an insurance settlement from the accident, which helped him through vocational school and to purchase his first car.

"It wasn't a whole lot that I could live on, and on top of that, because I could work and get around pretty much by myself and live independently, that made it hard for me to get disability and it made it hard to get Social Security," he said.

"My two dreams in life now are to become a positive role model and a motivational and inspirational leader here in Pinellas County."

Times researcher Carolyn Edds contributed to this report.

[Last modified July 11, 2006, 23:15:41]