Young Man With No Legs Compensates With Big Heart

Erik Blada’s view of the college campus is from waist level as he scoots from building to building on an old wooden skateboard that has seen better days.

For Blada, who was born with no legs and a deformed right arm, every trip is an opportunity--a chance to prove to himself and others that he can do whatever he sets his mind to.

“There’s always somebody telling you you can’t do something. It doesn’t matter who you are,” he says. “Life is just a big mind game.

“If you think you can do it, you can do it. If someone tells me I can’t, I’m going to do my darndest to do it.”

That charge-ahead attitude has left Blada so unfazed by his disability that he has not even bothered to find out the name for it. He and his family simply accepted it as a birth defect and moved on.

Seated comfortably on a couch in the student center at Minot State University-Bottineau, his trusty skateboard parked nearby, Blada seems wise beyond his 19 years.

He cannot ever remember wishing he had legs, or feeling sorry for himself.

He hunts. He bowls. He competes regularly in snowmobile drag races across the Upper Midwest and Canada. He even won a championship last fall at the Western Canadian Shootout in Saskatchewan on a snowmobile equipped with special handlebars. He drives a van equipped with hand controls.

His take on life is simple: Live it while you can.

“If you start feeling sorry for yourself, you let your body start shutting down, and then where do you go?” he says. “It’s so easy to go down, but so tough to get back up.”

He seems no different from any other freshman.

He has a full course schedule. He zips down sidewalks on a skateboard that he says “has been to the moon and back.” He opens doors and ascends stairs with ease. The thick gloves on his hands are worn and dirty and need replacing about once a month, but the smile on his face never seems to wear out.

Blada lives in Kramer, a town of about 50 people in north-central North Dakota. He is known to everyone on this small junior college campus.

“Someone who has a positive outlook on life like he does can’t help but have a positive influence on everyone he comes in contact with,” says Ken Grosz, the campus dean. “Remarkable is the word.”

Blada’s roommate, Matt Olson, is often amazed at his buddy’s eternal optimism and boundless energy.

“He’s crazy, he’s off the wall, he doesn’t let anything get to him,” Olson says. “He does everything he wants to do. He enjoys every minute of life.”

Blada says his life has never really been difficult because he has never let it, even when he was a child. He drove all the machinery on his family farm as a youngster, and first hopped on a snowmobile when he was about 6 years old.

“I’m really not scared of anything,” he says. “I’ve never let anything bother me. Pretty much in one ear and out the other. You just handle the situation you’re in. Everybody’s got problems; it’s just how you deal with your problems.”

While growing up, he took teasing from other youngsters in stride because, he says, “everybody gets their time when they get teased.” By the time he was in high school, he was beating his peers in snowmobile races.

“It would bother them sometimes--’A kid with no legs beating me, that’s not right’--but it was all in good fun,” he recalls.

Blada says growing up in a rural town with few people helped him gain acceptance. His mother, Connie, says her son’s upbeat attitude is important.

“One time we went to a basketball tourney--he must have been 3 or 4--and we were sitting in the stands and he says, ‘Oh, Mommy, I can’t wait until my legs grow,’ ” she says. “We talked about ‘Your legs won’t grow,’ and he never had any problems with it.

“Thinking about it almost broke my heart, but he’s always been very upbeat about it,” she says. “Anything he’s wanted to do, he’ll try to find some way to figure out how to do it.”

Blada came up with the skateboard idea while in high school. He got tired of hauling around his wheelchair on trips to the mall in nearby Minot.

“You can put this anywhere, and away you go,” he says, motioning to his constant companion.

After classes, he does what freshmen do: enjoy “the night life,” he says with a smile on his face and slight raise of his eyebrows.

He notices the stares he gets in public places, but he brushes them off.

“Certain people catch my attention too,” he says. “We’re all guilty of doing it.”

His goal in life is to be a motivational speaker. He already has talked to a Boy Scout troop, and says he’ll sit down and talk with just about anyone.

“I enjoy speaking, trying to help other people with their problems,” he says. “My problems are minimal compared to some other people. I would rather help somebody else than have them help me.”