From The Boston Globe: MARBLEHEAD, Mass. - Just before a parade in her honor began to zigzag its way through this quaint harborside town, Maureen McKinnon-Tucker, the first woman Paralympic gold medalist in sailing, greeted a crowd of 100 gathered in front of the Olde Towne House.
"Hey, guys! How are ya?" she cried from her red Corvette. A quick round of hugs followed. "It's very overwhelming," she said. "But Marblehead is a sailing town."
It would be like this all day for McKinnon-Tucker. It hadn't even been 48 hours since she returned from China and the Paralympic games, and she was being treated to a hero's welcome.
"This is what small-town America is all about," said Carol McLaughlin, a Marblehead resident, as she snapped a picture of McKinnon-Tucker and the crowd around her. "She's been just such an inspiration for everybody."
McLaughlin was referring to McKinnon-Tucker's fall 13 years ago off a seawall in Maine, when she broke her back and became paralyzed from the waist down, and her feat making history Sept. 12 in the Paralympics, a competition held after the general Olympics for athletes with physical disabilities.
McLaughlin was also referring to McKinnon-Tucker's discovery in January that her 2-year-old son, Trent, had brain cancer. In the face of that revelation, McKinnon-Tucker decided to press on with her bid for the Paralympics, in part because her teammate, Nick Scandone, who is battling Lou Gehrig's disease, may not see the next Paralympics.
Not far from the crowd stood Tim Angle, who was being honored at the parade, too. He had raced in the three-person sailing competition at the Paralympics while McKinnon-Tucker, a friend and former teammate, was racing the two-person.
He didn't win a medal, but Marblehead was proud nonetheless.
"I grew up in this community and it has always been a huge supporter for me and for Maureen," said Angle, who lost his left arm at the age of 18 to bacterial meningitis. "Maureen loves it, and she deserves it, too. It's pretty unbelievable that she's been able to accomplish what she has."
The Corvette's engine revved and the crowd parted to let McKinnon-Tucker begin driving the parade route through town.
A fire truck heading the procession carried her husband, Don Tucker, and Trent, who waved a tiny American flag for the crowd. The couple's 8-year-old daughter, Dana, marched in the parade, leading a group of children.
Spectators cheered and clapped and ran to the Corvette, offering congratulations, hugs, and kisses.
"I wish I had my cellphone [camera]," Monica Thompson, 11, told her aunt, Colleen Murphy, 40, as the parade passed by.
"I wish I had a flag," Murphy said, as she watched the others flutter in the wind.
When she found out that the parade was in honor of the town's gold medal winner, Murphy was floored. "That's her?" she asked. "That's so cool!"
"Come on," she said to her niece. "Let's go see the beginning. Isn't it awesome?"
The parade ended at the top of a hill with a panoramic view of the ocean. McKinnon-Tucker was honored with citations from each chamber of the Massachusetts Legislature. The Board of Selectmen named the day in her honor. Several spoke about her success, her history-making win, and what an inspiration she continues to be.
"I don't know what to say to that," McKinnon-Tucker said after the ceremony had ended. "I'm just doing what's important to me."
But if she is an inspiration, she said, she hopes it's because she's showing other disabled people that they set their own limits.
"We often convince ourselves of what we can't do instead of what we can do," she said.She never let herself believe she wouldn't bring home the gold, she said. Though, when somebody told her she had won, she was skeptical.
"I didn't believe the gentleman who told me," she said. "I was completely incredulous at the time and kept demanding he hand me a [score] sheet."
Watching from the spectators' boat, a day before the races had finished, Don Tucker began to tally the score. That's when he realized his wife had clinched the gold.
"I dropped my pencil, spun my daughter around, and said 'Mommy won the gold!' "
