Success Stories

How would you like to be paired up with a Biology Lab Partner who was nicknamed by teachers and classmates alike as “dummy”?
In 1987, he made medical history with an operation to separate a pair of Siamese twins. The Binder twins were born joined at the back of the head. Operations to separate twins joined in this way had always failed, resulting in the death of one or both of the infants. he agreed to undertake the operation. A 70-member surgical team, led by he, worked for 22 hours. At the end, the twins were successfully separated and can now survive independently.

How did he do it? In his own words….“I had a tremendous amount of faith in God, I asked God to give me wisdom.
My middle name is Solomon, and I start each day reading from the Book of Proverbs, and I end each day reading from the Book of Proverbs. That tells me that God has a since of humor, because he knew I was going to have this great sense of affinity for the Book of Proverbs. So he made my parents give me the middle name Solomon. But also, when Solomon became the King of Israel, the first big challenge he had that brought him great fame was when two women claimed to be the mother of the same baby. What did he advocate? He said," Divide the babies," and he became very well known. That's how I became well known, when I divided babies too. So I think God has a sense of humor.”

Benjamin Carson Pediatric Neurosurgeon

Who would of ever “thunk”  an actor  would receive a standing ovation at the Annual meeting of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics; and yet flunked Algebra in High School?  David Krumholtz  an actor who plays the math genius “Charlie Eppes” on the hit TV series Numb3rs, states “I was a terrible math student- I mean you can’t really get  worse, I failed Algebra 1 twice, I took it three years in a row!" 

What’s an  Oxymoron?  That’s greek to me meaning oxý(s)= sharp +morós=dull

Sharp at acting, dull at math, success in life! He didn’t let Algebra defeat him. 

He was more that just a  model for underwear, no #23 was one of the greatest basketball players of his generation. He possessed a desire to compete that was so fierce that he could lift an entire team to world champion status 3x in a row. Yet he was cut from his high school team because of  his perceived lack of skills. 5 times regular season MVP and six times Finals MVP later I guess you could say the man got skills!
Who was this student?  

Michael Jordan of the Chicago bulls

Now if somebody called you “Einstein” today they are giving you the compliment of being a brainiac. It is said as a baby, Albert Einstein didn’t even start speaking till he was three, His parents thought he might be mentally retarded. (It turned out  he was just mental) In his early school years, his teachers thought he wasn’t anything special either . Although at age 12 he taught himself Euclidean Geometry from a book dropped off at his house by a family friend. Later he failed entrance exams to get into college and even when he got in and graduated his professors wouldn’t  recommend him for a teaching position. So he worked as a clerk in the Swiss Patent Office and there created three of the most astounding Physic theory’s  that set the scientific world over the edge!  E= mc2:   Baby can talk now, you listen!

Some people don't believe that you can be a scientist and a dedicated christian yet this man has been declared to be the Father of Modern Science. He was unheralded as a great mathematician, yet discovered the foundations of calculus, you know that stuff you take in AP math your senior year.  You may of only heard of him as the guy dumb enough to fall asleep under an apple tree and got knocked in the head with an apple. Whether that is true or not did perform  some tremendous work on explaining  the laws of gravity. He also did some eye-opening works on optics.  Yet, when he was young did very poorly in school, so bad in fact the teachers gave him bad grades and not  much hope that he had any brains at all… Oh ye of little faith!

 Who was this?  Sir Isaac Newton:Scientist

He was the to be a General and future hero of the Gulf War. He was the Commander of Operation Desert Storm yet in elementary school his grades were only average. His dad had graduated from the United States Military of West Point and it was hoped he would be able to attend there one day. He would need good grades to be accepted. Norman had been tested out as a 170 IQ (that’s genius Level up there with Bill Gates of Microsoft fame) it wasn’t till he transferred to a military academy in 6th grade that his grades shot up to A’s.

In Norman's own words "I graduated valedictorian of my class in high school, and I was top 10% of my class at West Point, without very much work. And got a Master's Degree in Guided Missile Engineering from USC. Something turned on. I was never a bookworm, I was always interested more in being more well-rounded, rather than being perhaps viewed as perhaps an egghead.

Name, rank, and serial number!     4 star General Norman Swarzkopf

 

 

For all you people you tried out for the school plays, and have been rejected for parts think how you would feel if you heard this assessment after your first big screen test. “This kid is losing hair. Can’t sing, can dance just a little….The head of production took him a little more seriously he said “'I am still a little uncertain about the man, but I feel in spite of his enormous ears and bad chin line, that his charm is so tremendous it comes through even in this wretched test.”

Yet years later his legs were insured for one million dollars, he has been named the #5 greatest actor on the 50 greatest Screen Legends by the American Film Institute.  He did more than puttin on the ritz he was the Ritz.

This student of the arts was Fred Astaire.

Talk about gags, how about a gaggle of geese, this student locked up a flock of geese in a classroom. Then the one joke that got him suspended from school was when he unscrewed all the desks and benches (this is old school they were bolted to the ground!)  and hoisted them up to a trap door in the attic. No more teaching, no more looks, no more desks to hide your books!  William did come back to school and graduated. He became the first Professor of Medicine the Chief Physician at Johns Hopkins Hospital.   

Dr. William Osler.