After a high school student from Barberton died of a heart attack when collapsing on the football field, Dr. Terry Gordon, then president of the American Heart Association, vowed to not let this happen again.
Except for the wail of the young man’s mother, you could hear a pin drop, said Gordon, a retired cardiologist, who talks with Pat Reese about his successful campaign to get defibrillators into schools.
Defibrillators, which provide electric shocks to those facing cardiac arrest, have been installed in schools throughout Ohio, thanks to Gordon, who is now working toward installing them in every school in America. As many as 450,000 people suffer and die from sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) each year in the United States, with between 7,000 and 10,000 of them being children.
Gordon, who is also an author of the book “No Storm Lasts Forever,” has been through his own series of misfortunes and believes that God has never created a storm that will last forever. Gordon’s son was in a car accident, rendering him a paraplegic, and on his way home to see his son, Gordon says he was given a message from God. In a vision, he was told to treat this as something you had chosen.
Gordon’s philosophy is that we only grow with adversity and that it should be treated as a gift, so in order to grow you must overcome obstacles and learn from hard times. Gordon believes that life is all about growth and with adversity comes true growth, and the choice is to suffer or learn from the experience.
For more information about Gordon or to purchase his book “No Storm Lasts Forever,” visit www.drterrygordon.com.
