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Disability strengthens South Range grad’s drive
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Anthony Hartwig
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Despite the cerebral palsy that severely weakened his legs, Anthony Hartwig, 19, never lost his athletic drive. Using his canes, he’ll walk across the graduation stage today at South Range High School to receive his diploma.
By Robert Guttersohn
BOARDMAN
On the wall next to 19-year-old Anthony Hartwig’s room hangs a frame filled with photographs of his wheelchair-bound brother, Randy Hartwig Jr.
If Randy were alive today, he’d be 28. But he died at 19 from cerebral palsy — the same disease Anthony was diagnosed with at 9 months old.
Anthony, despite his affliction, will walk across the graduation stage today at South Range High School.
Sitting on the couch in his living room, he looks just like any other young man.
“He loves sports so much,” his mother, Karla Patton, said. “That’s all he’s ever thought about is sports.”
In middle school, he asked the football coach if he could play on the team.
“What do I do?” Patton remembered the coach asking her one night.
CP has severely weakened his legs and left him almost legally blind, forcing him to read from large-print textbooks. But it never hampered his athletic drive.
The football coach offered him a bench position, but it wasn’t enough for Anthony. Instead, he played intramural and Special Olympics basketball and softball.
Watching movies with his dad, Randy Sr., Anthony found another passion — video recording. He recorded every Lady Raiders basketball game and created highlight reels for them to give to colleges. And he recently won the Outstanding Senior Project award for his two-hour video documentary on the team.
For Karla Patton, a single parent for many years, it was sometimes stressful raising two kids with cerebral palsy as well as two other sons — Tom Hartwig, 26, and Bill Hartwig, 24.
But Anthony’s laid-back approach to his disease made life easier on him and others around him. He’s often told that he is viewed as a positive influence in the school.
“I’m an inspiration to everyone around me,” Anthony said. “So if I’m not strong, then other people will see that, so that keeps me strong.”
Anthony even found ways to crack fun at himself.
“People thought I was so funny so they said, ‘Why don’t you be a stand-up comedian,’ and I’d tell them, ‘Well I have to work on the standing-up part of it.’”
His mother laughed. “That’s the way he is.”
Like CP, the sense of humor seems to be genetic. Karla Patton said Randy Jr., Anthony’s oldest brother, always smiled.
“Anthony had a really hard time when [Randy Jr.] passed away, because he thought — since he had the same disease — that he was going to pass away, too,” she said.
But for Anthony, who uses a pair of canes to walk short distances, the biggest threat is falling. For a person who has to focus on walking, the slightest distraction – such as a mortarboard slipping from atop his head – could cause his legs to give out.
But for a young man who strives to be like everyone else, taking a wheelchair across the graduation stage is not an option.
“He hates that wheelchair,” Karla Patton said.