I had the pleasure of meeting Randy Snow many years ago in Texas. He is from a small town just a few miles down the road from Wills Point, TX, where my family is from.
Randy is a genuine, nice but very driven man. He never let anything stand in his way. I'm happy that I was fortunate to have been an acquaintance of his.
Randy Snow, 1959-2009
The wheelchair sports community lost one of its icons Nov. 19 when Randy Snow — wheelchair tennis pioneer, four-time Paralympics competitor and the first wheelchair athlete inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame — died unexpectedly at age 50.
"According to the Dallas Morning News, Snow died of an apparent heart attack in his hotel room in El Salvador, where he had been teaching wheelchair tennis.
Born in Terrell, Texas, Snow was a state-ranked tennis player as a teenager before sustaining a spinal cord injury in 1975. A few years later, while a student at the University of Texas at Austin, he formed a wheelchair basketball team and also began racing. In the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, Snow competed in a 1,500-meter wheelchair race as an exhibition event, winning a silver medal and receiving a standing ovation — the first Paralympic event to receive wide public exposure.
He won two gold medals in tennis at the 1992 Paralympics in Barcelona, and was a member of the U.S. wheelchair basketball team that won the bronze medal at the 1996 Atlanta Games. To date, he is the only athlete to have won medals in three different sports.
Remarking on his death, those who knew him praised him as a trailblazer in wheelchair sports, a worthy opponent and a loyal friend.
“When I first got injured 25 years ago, I met Randy six months later — we were friends from the get-go,” says fellow wheelchair tennis player Rick Cooper. “He was very outgoing, very friendly, very talented — he was such a gifted athlete.
When I saw the level of tennis that Randy played, I wanted to get to that level. He never let disability hold him back. And he made anybody and everybody that he met feel important.”
Thank you Randy for living your life fully and sharing your talent with the world.
Sharon
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