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FORT WORTH — Nearly one year after a little boy lost part of his leg in a train accident, he's achieving what his mother once thought was impossible.
Anthony Bell (pictured) is playing football.
His mother, Montricia Johnson, said the reality of Anthony's loss only set in after all the publicity died down and he started dealing with a left leg that was amputated below the knee.
"When we got home and he was trying to do therapy and trying to learn to walk on the leg — that's when it hit him," she said.
By spring, Anthony returned to his second grade class, but not to his football team. "Not being able to go outside and play with the kids, he kind of sat in the front door and was like sad, you know?" Johnson said.
Then, in August — newly fitted with a prosthetic leg — Anthony made a decision: He wasn't sitting on the sidelines any longer.
"First he started learning how to ride his scooter; then his bike; and from then it's been on," Johnson said.
The first day of practice, Coach Floyd Douglas thought he would let Anthony set his own limits. He's still waiting for that to happen.
As it turned out, it might be the other players who deserve the concern. Anthony is tackling hard and showing no sign of backing down.
"When it came to hit, he was ready to hit and ready to go at it," Douglas said. "I just couldn't say 'no.'"
A year ago, looking down on her son in a hospital bed, Montricia Johnson prayed her son would find normalcy. Today, the family's goal is higher.
Beth Haller, Ph.D., is Co-Director of the Global Alliance for Disability in Media and Entertainment (www.gadim.org). A former print journalist, she is a member of the Advisory Board for the National Center on Disability and Journalism (https://ncdj.org/). Haller is Professor Emerita in the Department of Mass Communication at Towson University in Maryland, USA. Haller is co-editor of the 2020 "Routledge Companion to Disability and Media" (with Gerard Goggin of University of Sydney & Katie Ellis of Curtin University, Australia). She is author of "Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media" (Advocado Press, 2010) and the author/editor of Byline of Hope: Collected Newspaper and Magazine Writing of Helen Keller (Advocado Press, 2015). She has been researching disability representation in mass media for 30+ years. She is adjunct faculty in the Disability Studies programs at the City University of New York (CUNY) and the University of Texas-Arlington.
From WFAA-TV in Dallas:
