CHESAPEAKE, Va. - Each step...one of defiance.
Brent James climbed the South Norfolk Jordan Bridge on Saturday morning, pushing back on words he heard three years ago.
“The doctors told me I would never walk again," James, 44, says of the stroke he suffered in January of 2020.
The Chesapeake man says he never shared that belief, even as a wheelchair carried him into his first appointment with physical therapists at Adler Therapy Group in Virginia Beach.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had a patient with this amount of determination and motivation," recalls Jackie Evard, the first therapist to work with James.
She says that drive had James taking his second "first steps" over a year ago now. Around 9 a.m., Evard and other therapists from James' team reunited with him at the foot of the Jordan Bridge on the Portsmouth side.
At nearly 170 feet above the Elizabeth River at its highest, the bridge is the tallest in Hampton Roads; the perfect place for James to show his therapists, friends and family just how far he'd come.
Though still a challenge to walk, James put one foot in front of the other, traveling one mile up and down the bridge, with around a dozen supporters behind him.
They all began to clap as James reached the Chesapeake side.
“Seeing him go from not walking at all to walking with no brace, no cane, (and now) obviously up and down a mile of this really big bridge is just incredible," Evard told News 3 afterward, adding that this type of progress typically doesn't happen with patients.
And that's the point for James, who says he hopes his story can motivate others staring down what's seemingly impossible.
“I really want to inspire the world and I’m going to do that. I inspire myself," he said. “You can’t give up, you know what I’m saying? Because a lot of things in life will make you give up."
And, would you believe it? That determination carried James back over the mile-long bridge he'd just crossed, one step at a time.
