"I'm the last of 14 children, and we lived in a little house where we burned coal oil lamps for light and you could reach through the floorboards and feed the chickens. When I was 3 years old, I got hit by a car and was unconscious for a year and 45 days. One day at the hospital, Mama was sitting by my bed and said, ' I'm about to give up on you. Looks like you ought to smile or laugh or something' and that's when I woke up. I said, 'Mama!' and she hollered so, everybody on the other end of the hospital floor came running, thinking I had died. Six months later, I was home. My right side is still partly paralyzed, but I don't let anything stop me. If I can't fix something because of my hand, I can look at it and tell somebody else what to do and they can fix it. You wouldn't believe the kind of work I do: I'm a roofer."