For Ben Comen, an 18-year-old from Anderson, SC, who has cerebral palsy, life has been full of dreams. And thanks to his own steely determination and an incredibly supportive family, community and school—not to mention a little boost from a couple of guys on the West Coast—he’s achieved more of them than anyone ever thought possible. Except, perhaps, Ben himself and those who know him best: his parents.

From the very beginning, his mom and dad challenged him to work for what he wanted. “We decided that Ben’s limitations needed to be his own, not those imposed by society,” his mother, Joan, explains. “We wanted Ben to decide what he could and couldn’t do.”

And so he did. By the time he was three, Ben was walking. Unsteadily and slowly. But walking. As he got older, he continued to reach for his dreams, like inline skating and running.

In seventh grade, Ben told his mother he wanted to run cross-country on his middle-school team. Not sure how to handle his request, she made a call to the coach, Chuck Parker. “There was no hesitation,” she says. “‘Bring him on,’ he said. ‘We’ll take care of him.’ And he did.

“What Coach Parker did was amazing,” Joan recalls. “He took what Ben had to work with and made it possible for him to participate in a sport that requires tremendous physical endurance.”

Limping, often bruised and bloodied from falling but with a look of pure resolve on his face, Ben crosses the finish line of every race he enters. He’s last, but you’d never know it. That’s because all the other racers, as well as an army of friends, run the last mile of the race with Ben. “It’s an amazing sight,” Joan says. “It looks like the cavalry is coming in. But what makes it truly special is that the kids started doing it on their own.”

National Acclaim

Word of Ben’s achievements grew. ESPN, ABC, Sports Illustrated and The Today Show all ran features on Ben’s courage. 

One day the Comens’ phone rang. A man named Tim Hoctor was calling from Los Angeles. He’d seen Ben’s story on ESPN and wanted to do something for him. “He told us he was actor and director Kevin Costner’s oldest friend. We thought he was crazy,” Joan says. “We’d had so many strange calls at that point, but we checked him out on the Internet and, by golly, it was true. When we called back, Tim told us that he and Kevin wanted to see to it that Ben could achieve his dream of going to college.”

“It was serendipity,” Hoctor says. “Ben was in South Carolina. We already had plans to be there for the BMW Celebrity Pro-Am. This was an opportunity to take a deserving young man with the courage of a lion and make a difference in his life.”

When Costner and Hoctor arrived in nearby Greenville for the tournament, they met Ben and his family for lunch at La Bastide Inn, part of The Cliffs Communities. They also shared their good news: Thanks in large part to donations from IMI and The Cliffs Communities, Hoctor and Costner raised enough money—just over $80,000—for both Ben and his twin brother, Alex, to attend college. As if that weren’t enough, Costner and Hoctor also arranged, again through their South Carolina partners, for seed money for Ben to start a foundation (see below) to help other families with disabled children.

“It’s been an honor to know Ben,” Costner says. “The example he gives to the world humbles all of us.”

 

 

Living Without Limits

For more information about the foundation, go to www.livingwithoutlimits.org.