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he rock reads “Believe.” Situated outside Desmond “Dez” Dez has chased that feeling ever since. Jackson’s back door, he sees the script carved in stone every “That should have been the clue right there for me,” Deborah day. It’s both reminder and inspiration, a sign of where Dez says, “but I was still a slow learner, that he was gonna go on to do came from, but also where he’s going. great things.” Today, specifically, that’s to Morris Williams Track and Field It wasn’t until six years later that Dez officially picked up track after Stadium, just in time for a morning training. Bigger picture: he’s trying almost every other sport besides football. The Jacksons finally got headed to the 2021 Tokyo Paralympics, where Dez hopes to set the hint when Dez broke seven national records in his age group at his an international record in the 100-meter dash. That might not first track meet in Fishersville, Virginia, at age 9. be an unreasonable goal either, considering Dez That’s when it all hit. Deborah canceled personal entered the U.S. Paralympic trials in June with vacations and applied for every grant known to man. the fastest time. For good measure, he also placed She made the three-hour drive to Charlotte every second in long jump. month so Dez could train with the Carolina Cruisers For as much as Dez hopes to accomplish on the or meet with the state’s best prosthetists. She even track, he also thinks beyond it. And, importantly, he sent him to the London Summer Games in 2012. He believes. Thanks to his mother, Deborah Waddell was just 12. Jackson, he always has. “That was such a special experience for me,” Dez “It was mainly my mother at first, but I wasn’t says. “Being there, seeing the crowd, seeing the athletes, treated like a person with a disability,” Dez says. “That seeing the podium. It was the icing on the cake, and it – DEBORAH WADDELL JACKSON trickled down to my mentality to what she taught me motivated me and inspired me to reach that point.” as a child and how other people started treating me like That’s when Dez started competing at Rogers-Herr everyone else, and never considered me to be lesser than.” Middle School as the only amputee on the track and Dez’s leg was amputated above the knee due to a congenital birth field team and eventually at Hillside High School, where the studentdefect as an infant. He learned to walk by his first birthday all the same. athlete earned First-Team All-America status all four years. By the time he was 3, he barely ever sat down. He went on to compete as the youngest Black male on the U.S. In fact, Dez was invited to be part of the finale in a race against John Track & Field Paralympic Team during the Rio de Janeiro Games in Register, who earned the silver medal in the long jump at the 2000 2016. And now at age 21, he is an ambassador of the #ShowTheWorld Paralympic Games, at the Disabled Sports USA International Challenge campaign, launched by the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee at Disney’s Wide World of Sports in 2002. Deborah and Dez’s grandma in June, to drive support for the Paralympic movement. Evelyn Waddell, who flew down to Orlando with Dez, looked away. “That was always the goal for me: to open a door for people with Their nerves were unsettled, but when the gun went off, Dez, who had disabilities – not only amputees,” Dez says, “to be able to [give them] never run before, ran. His little leg with no knee that he couldn’t bend the courage and motivation, and [for them] to be allowed to even glided across the ground. The stadium went wild. compete in track or any other sport that they prefer.” 44
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durhammag.com
HE PERSISTED. HE ENDURED. HE WAS DETERMINED NOT TO QUIT.
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august 2021