Harold Kelley from Grand Prairie can still remember wanting to be a bodybuilder. He can still remember when he hoped he’d make money doing it. And can still remember how it all became possible when he could walk.
“What actually are you going to do?” he recalled. “Cause you are in a wheelchair. What’s going on?”
Harold first flexed his potential when he started body building 18 years ago. Even though he knew nothing about it at the time, he was on the fast track to competing in events like the Arnold Classic, the Super Bowl for bodybuilders.
But a few years later, a car accident fractured Harold’s spine and left him and his dream paralyzed. Today, he runs a home business with his wife, Ana, and says not once has he ever felt sorry for himself.
“Don’t worry about what you can’t do. Worry about what you can do. That was the way I lived,” he said.
With that outlook, Harold continued working out, just to stay in shape. That’s when Ana learned of a bodybuilding competition for people in wheelchairs, the first of its kind.
Harold entered and won. He won the second year, and then the third.
Then, the Arnold Classic, the Super Bowl of bodybuilding, announced, for the first time, it would have a wheelchair competition.
It was no competition.
Harold won a few thousand bucks and then repeated as champ this year.
“If you start understanding your purpose, then you can understand the greatness that can come from it,” he says.
Harold says he’s found so much purpose in life that he’s actually grateful he was paralyzed.
“I’m grateful that I was chosen for this position,” he said. “I’m trying to show people that even if you fell you can get back up and still excel past where you thought you were in the beginning.”
Some pretty strong words to live by.
To help Harold’s mission or follow his career in bodybuilding, go here.