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It is interesting to notice that some people spring up from debilitating disability and work their way through a thousand obstacles. If we want it and dream about it...there's nothing that's going to stop us. In fact, most of the important things in the world that we enjoy today, have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.

Here's a true story
(shared by Mario Villalobos of Makati, City, Philippines) of a woman who denied the odds, accepted the situation gracefully and happily and hurdled the challenges of having no arms and be an inspiration to millions of people.

Jessica Cox, a girl born without arms from Tucson, Arizona got the Sport Pilot certificate recently and became the first pilot licensed to fly using only her feet. Jessica was born without arms, but that has not stopped her from doing what she loves to do.

Her latest flight into the seemingly impossible dream is becoming the first pilot licensed to fly using only her feet. With one foot manning the controls and the other delicately guiding the steering column, Cox soared to achieve a Sport Pilot certificate qualifying her to fly a light-sport aircraft to altitudes of 10,000 feet.

“She’s a good pilot. She’s rock solid,“ said Parrish Traweek, the flying instructor at San Manuel’s Ray Blair Airport. Parrish Travweek runs PC Aircraft Maintenance and Flight Services and has trained many pilots, some of whom didn’t come close to Cox’s abilities. “When she came up here driving a car,” Travwwek recalled, “I knew she’d have no problem flying a plane.”

Doctors never learned why she was born without arms, but she figured out early on that she didn’t want to use prosthetic devices.

Jessica Cox, earned a licnese to fly airplanes on October 10 2008. She also has two black belts in Tae Kwan-Do, a college degree in Psychology, and a thriving career as a motivational speaker. Jessica has no arms, but this bilateral congenital limb deficiency doesn’t stop her from achieving and surpassing her goals. From birth on, her feet became her hands. She can drive a car, type 25 words per minute, and fly an airplane using her feet, without any special adaptations.

“I highly encourage people with disabilities to consider flying,"  She said. “It helps reverse the sterotype that people with disabilities are powerless to believe that they are powerful and capable of setting high goals and achieving them.” Jessica earned her Sport Pilot certificate after training with Able Flight, a North Carolina flight training company that specializes in helping people with disabilities learn to fly. She won an Able Flight scholarship and was able to train with instructor Parrish Traweek free of charge.

Sometimes we do not have to follow where the path may lead, but go where there is no path, and leave a trail. Related story: The Dog Called Faith.

To get something we never had, we have to do something we never did. Our greatest glory consists not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

  

Tim