Have it tough? Try walking 22 miles while disabled

OREM — Just about the time I get to thinking life is hard and I've got it ever so tough, (like now, having had to wear a protective boot on my foot for the past five weeks), I run into the likes of C. Raymond Smith.

Smith is a remarkable man who contracted polio at the age of 3 but didn't let that stop him from getting a solid education, marrying the woman he loves, raising a large family and learning to play literally dozens of instruments on the way to a fulfilling career in jazz and classical music.

He's a legend in his own time, known to his BYU colleagues as a tireless teacher who's raised the level of musicianship to a place where the music for those auditioning for "Synthesis" is so difficult the judges shake their heads.

He wears double braces on his legs and uses a cane, but even when he broke a femur, he didn't let it slow him down.

Instead of taking the opportunity to wallow in self pity, he simply arranged to have triplicates of his instruments at his home, office and teaching station so he could keep right on rocking.

There's no time taken to rue the day with Smith.

I "met" a similar man in a film shown at the recent LDS Film Festival, "Only a Stonecutter."

I deliberately sought out this film because I have an ancestor who cut the stone ball upon which the Angel Moroni stands at the top of the Salt Lake Temple.

John Rowe Moyle, upon whom the film is based, joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in England and came west with his family to Zion with the Ellsworth handcart company.

Once situated in Alpine, he accepted the call to cut stone for the temple without asking anyone how he was going to get there and back.

He didn't have a car or a horse to spare, so he just started walking the 22 miles to the "job." Every week, he rose at 2 a.m. on Monday so he could get there by 8 a.m. He'd stay with his daughter and son-in-law through the week and then walk home on Friday so he could catch up on the farming chores.

He did this for more than 20 years, even after one leg was amputated below the knee and he had to walk with a makeshift wooden leg that certainly couldn't have been very comfortable.

I gripe if I have to take the stairs when the elevator is broken and fuss when I have to walk very far in the cold weather.

I hate to think how much would it take before I'd agree to walk 22 miles anywhere.

In the meantime, people like Smith and Moyle set a right impressive example, don't you think? We should follow in their footsteps.

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E-mail: haddoc@desnews.com