Marty Ravellette, a resident of Carrboro, was really thinking on his feet when he saved 86-year old Elma Snedeker from a burning van alongside U.S. 15-501 Bypass in Durham earlier this month. Born armless, Ravellette used his foot to smash a van window so his wife could unlock the door and save the elderly woman.
Although Ravellette downplayed the incident, the national and local media took notice. His picture popped up in USA Today and a three-minute clip about the rescue surfaced on the NBC Today show.
What makes Marty Ravellette's rescue story unique, however, is not that he is living with a disability but that he is virtually living without one.
Holding his coffee cup nonchalantly in his foot, Ravellette has noticed the stares at Shoney's restaurant on Hillandale Road, where he has just dropped his wife off for work.
"People have to take a second look. They see that foot up on the table or driving down the road, and they say 'Wait a minute! Something's wrong!'" he said.
But Ravellette says he himself refuses to believe that anything is wrong. "When I was about 10 years old, I looked in the mirror at that little boy with no arms, and I didn't see him, " he said.
Ravellette grew up in a crippled children's home for orphans for his first sixteen years after being abandoned by his parents for his deformity. Despite taunts and jeers from children and adults alike, he accomplished feats that would amaze any bystander.
Learning to pitch hardballs for baseball games at age eight with his feet or winning a bronze medal in a diving meet at age 14, Ravellette never truly felt disabled. "When I ran away from home when I was 18, society tried to tell me that I was [disabled], but I wouldn't accept it," he said.
And Ravellette still does not. "We've accepted to some degree the fellow that's in the wheelchair and the blind person, but that man or woman with no arms is so different that the acceptance hasn't come yet," he said.
Therefore, people refuse to believe-and oftentimes refuse to accept-that he drives, plays pool, fishes, and even hunts using his feet. "Your association with feet is totally different than my association," he said. The stares Ravellette receives as he sips his coffee is indication of this truth.
Ravellette remains unfazed, however. "If I take it in all the time, I'll go crazy with it. Am I that appalling?" he said. Deciding against this commonplace idea, Ravellette began a tongue-in-cheek business 10 years ago that made light of his disability.
Having created Marty's Hands-On Lawn Care Service, Ravellette had business cards printed with two feet on them not, he said, to promote his business, but to provide a conversation piece.
From mowing lawns to planting shrubbery, Ravellette uses various other parts of his body to get the work done, including his stomach to push the lawn mower and his foot to turn on the engine.
With a straight face, he said, "I always tell people my favorite tool in my van is my chainsaw."
Thoroughly enjoying his "mom and pop"-type business, in which he does 90 percent of the work himself, Ravellette has a "been there, done that" list of accomplishments that make up an impressive resume.
Before his stint as a landscaper, he drove a truck for U-Haul along the West Coast, worked as a custodian in an Oregon community college and in a phosphate mine in Florida and studied at a welding school.
Add to this list the title of guest lecturer at the university level and the volume of accomplishments mounts. Already having lectured at the University of Oregon, Oregon State University, and the University of Idaho, Ravellette is currently speaking with Professor Chuck Stone's magazine writing class at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Stone invites unique guests with colorful personas into the classroom setting; he invited Ravellette after noticing him landscaping at a car dealer's lot near his home.
"Marty's technique is an honest, no-holds barred lecture about his life," Stone said. "[It's about] growing up with no arms, fighting for acceptance, weathering the insults of classmates, being rejected by a girl he invited to the prom ("Who will lead?" she asked him), desperately trying to be accepted as much as any physically normative-not normal, but normative-person is accepted."
The response to Ravellette taking off his shoes and scratching his nose with his foot at first shocks and then impresses students, Stone said.
As he continues to take his coffee at Shoney's, all seems well for Ravellette. With his ability to do just about anything other people can do, he continues to fight to make society aware of people like him.
With finality, he said, "Many of us that are handicapped are heroes because we had to buck the tide. We had to buck society just to make it through. I accept the fact that I've made something of myself. Not so I can stand up with pride and arrogance, but to stand up with self-worth and dignity."
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.