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| MODEL BEHAVIOR—U.S. Olympian Erica Bartolina doesn’t mind talking about her disability, hoping her story will inspire others who face physical challenges to carry on and overcome them.
Photo by John Lenz |
Bartolina's ‘secret’ sure to inspire Games
It's been a while now since Erica Bartolina has been the "one-eyed pole vaulter”, as her hometown newspaper once described her.
She still is, of course — one-eyed, that is — but not very publicly since making her home in Hammond. But now that she's made the U.S. Olympic team headed to Beijing for the Summer Olympics next month, expect her not-so-secret identity to be once again fair fodder, especially for the NBC TV Olympics hype machine.
The nice thing is, for a couple of very good reasons, Bartolina is quite comfortable with that. For one thing, it's just simply who she is after losing sight in one eye in an automobile accident when she was just three months old.
"I've dealt with it my whole life, so it's never something I had to
start dealing with," Erica said last week. "It was always there. I grew up in a pretty small, close-knit community (Philomath Ore.), so everybody knew about me and they knew I had a fake eye.
"I remember there was a headline at one point in high school, ‘One-eyed pole vaulter places at state’ or something. And that was a headline in our local newspaper, so I couldn't pretend like I was anything else.
"Once I got to college (at Texas A&M), there was mention of it but it didn't take precedence quite like it did in high school. And since I've been out of high school, as people become more mature and more adult, they don't say as much about things like that. They pretend it's not there."
That's pretty much how it's been for Bartolina now that she makes her home in Hammond. It's not a big obvious thing, so the subject rarely if ever comes up as she goes around town.
Funny thing about that — people making a point not to bring up the subject seem to make Bartolina more uneasy than actually talking about it.
"It's been a little bit weird for me because as I meet new people and have new friends and establish myself in a new community, it's amazing how many people don't even know," Bartolina said. "And I've been used to everybody knowing my whole life.
"In some ways it makes me more uncomfortable because I don't know if they know or not, and I don't want them to be scared to ask or wondering, ‘What's wrong with her eye?’. It's easier for me for it to be out in the open. It will be back to exactly what I'm used to."
Bartolina's is a story tailor-made for one of those feel-good Olympic features, where it's not enough to be accomplished, or even attractive and accomplished. But blind in one eye as well? They'll eat that up in Beijing.
"NBC picked it up already and that was one of the first stories they ran," said Erica's coach/husband, Mike Bartolina, who thinks that because the accident happened when it did, and Erica never had any conscious memory of two-eyed sight, it's actually been somewhat easier to deal with in her athletic career than it might have been.
"I think the fact that it happened when she was three months old, it's just something she's always had," Mike Bartolina said. "Not that it isn't a significant disability or anything, but if it happened when she was older it would probably have been even more difficult for her to deal with and overcome."
And boy, howdy, hasn't she overcome it? But not completely, you understand.
"She can't catch a ball," Mike Bartolina tattled. "But she found something she could do where it wasn't a big factor and she's made the most of it."
And that's where the second reason comes in for Bartolina being comfortable with whatever publicity her disability brings her.
"It's something that I like for people to know," Erica said, “because there are a lot of people out there who have small disabilities that may not seem like that big of a deal to the people around them or the public, but that they have to deal with. For some people, that's going to be a physical disability.
“I think if they can see what I've done, it may give them a little bit more encouragement in their life to be able to overcome some of the limitations they might feel like they have in their lives.
“You know, just because you have a limitation doesn't mean that it has to stop you from trying."
Not to mention, succeeding.
Now how cool is it this U.S. Olympian who could be a model but would rather be a role model counts herself a Hammond resident?
You go, girl.
