Former Razorback track star, Gulf War veteran and paralympian John Register repeated the Olympic motto "Citius, Altius, Fortius" -- faster, higher, stronger -- during his speech Thursday at the West Central Arkansas Society for Human Resource Management's 12th annual managers seminar.
A four-time All-American at the University of Arkansas, Register continued in his sport when he joined the U.S. Army, serving during the Gulf War. In his third attempt to make the U.S. Olympic team, he suffered an accident that changed his life.
Doctors told him he could keep his leg and never walk again or lose the leg and walk on a prosthetic. He chose to have his leg amputated.
Eighteen months after the accident, Register swam in the Paralympic Games in Atlanta. Returning to track and field, he won the silver medal and set the American long-jump record during the 2000 Paralympic Games in Sydney, Australia.
He later started the United States Olympic Committee's Paralympic Military Program, advising three U.S. secretaries of state on foreign-policy issues regarding disability.
Register shared his experiences Thursday to illustrate his topic "Hurdling Adversity -- The Power of Inspiration."
"Inspiration leads to motivation. Motivation causes action. Action leads to results and results either reinspire us or allow someone else who is watching the process to latch onto the vision," Register said.
It's important that the Olympic motto means faster, stronger, higher and not fastest, strongest, highest, Register said, because it inspires to be "great today, greater tomorrow."
Register told the managers it is their responsibility as leaders to see others' potential, relating the story of when he ran at The Dallas Morning News Invitational his freshman year of college. Winning his race, he was invited back to run against men who had long been his heroes and role models. Taking pictures when he should have been warming up, Register ran worse, he said, than earlier in the day.
Afterward, a woman told him she had watched both races and that she had seen him taking pictures and not preparing. She told Register he wasted his invitation and could run have better with proper dedication, changing his mindset. Later, he learned that the woman was Olympic gold medalist Jeannette Bolden.
Running against his heroes the next year, he took Bolden's advice, and though not winning, he improved his performance over the previous year. He used that to illustrate how a manager should help the people they lead move forward.
"He was an inspiration to grow and do better things and never give up," said Holly Bogard, of Berry Plastics.
First Staff sponsored the daylong seminar, allowing participants to meet 15 different vendors and attend various sessions. Seminar chair Tara Mauk Arthur said 330 attended representing 90 companies across central Arkansas and two from Texas -- the largest seminar in the program's history, said Deanna Harris, president.
The 2016 seminar is scheduled Sept. 1.
Local on 08/28/2015