You are not too old by Natspirations

Here is an interesting and encouraging article by Natspirations Yahoo Group :


Feel too old…too broke…too tired…to chase your dream? Maybe you just need a role model.

Although he hadn’t made a movie in 36 years and had never really “acted” before, George Burns won wide acclaim and an Academy Award for best supporting actor for his role in The Sunshine Boys. It was his first Academy Award. He was 80-years-old.

Ocie Tune King had always wanted to complete her college degree after leaving school at the end of her junior year. She finally realized her dream in 1999, graduating from West Virginia University at the age of 94.

Golda Mier was 71 when she was elected Prime Minister of Israel – the first woman so elected.

Tim Frisby waited 20 years to fulfill a lifetime dream. He was a 39-year-old freshman on the 2004 varsity football team at the University of South Carolina.

Maxcy Filer was 61-years-old before he passed the California Bar Exam after failing 47 times over 25 years.

J.C. Penney lost his entire fortune at age 45 but bounced back to endow many charitable causes through his James C. Penney Foundation, which is still active today. He was still coming in to his office at age 95.

Harland Sanders was 62-years-old, with nothing more than his $105 social security check and a recipe for fried chicken, when he founded franchise giant Kentucky Fried Chicken.

At 47, Martina Navratilova became the oldest woman to ever win a match at Wimbledon.

Japanese Kozo Haraguchi took up running aged 65 and at age 95 slashed the world 100 metres sprint record for men aged 95-99, clocking 22.04 seconds.

Doris Eaton Travis appeared on Broadway for the first time as a Ziegfeld girl when she was just 14 years old - the youngest Ziegfeld girl ever. In 1998, she made Broadway history by appearing at The New Amsterdam Theatre after an 80 year absence where she tap danced in a benefit for AIDS.

At the tender age of 101 she received an honorary doctorate of humanities from Oakland University and two years ago wrote and published a book, “Days We Danced: The Story of My Theatrical Family From Florenz Ziegfeld to Arthur Murray” (Marquand Books).

Today she is enjoying her third career. After dancing and acting she and her husband owned and operated the nation’s largest chain of Arthur Murray dance studios. In 2000 she and her late husband purchased a 400-acre horse ranch which she continues to operate.

Despite an extremely full life, she still found time to enroll at the University of Oklahoma, where she became the oldest graduate at age 88, with a degree in History.

Dorothy G. Hensley, age 89, is in the final months of her battle with congestive heart disease.

Dorothy did not complete high school and never believed she had the talent to be a writer but she has had a lifelong dream to be a published writer. And she has written all her life. Her daughter remembers her mother getting up very early in the morning so she could write at the kitchen table while the house was quiet.

When Dorothy was in her 40’s, she went to a junior college to learn to be a better writer, despite lack of support from her husband and ridicule from classmates 25 years her junior. Three years ago, at the urging of her daughter, Dorothy began taking a memoir-writing class. It was in those classes that her instructors and classmates acknowledged her as a talented writer, and she began to believe it. Dorothy has said of writing that she felt “almost overpowered with a passion as strong as hunger, as demanding as birth.”

Dorothy has written many stories about her family and experiences while growing up. It was her dream to see her passion of writing in print — to be recognized as a writer of promise before she dies.

She is currently in hospice care and recently realized her dream when her story below was published at beliefnet.com, the largest website of it’s kind on the entire world wide web.

Remember, you are never too old to achieve what you want IF YOU BELIEVE in yourself.

Comments

Roshanthi said…
That's a really inspirational article.
Thanks for sharing :0)
Anonymous said…
Inspiring and hopeful.

Hope is a good thing. I really recommend this post.

Can I spread this?

Dipo Tepede
me@dipotepede.com
Nigeria
Anonymous said…
This was very inspiring. I loved it - check in with me again when I'm 85.