Alan Marshall was born, like every child, to run, jump, play fun with peers. But it turned out differently. Life has developed so that every movement was an overcoming and a feat. And he never disturbed others with his suffering. On the contrary, Alan Marshall gave lessons of courage and stamina throughout his life. His biography is the story of a person with an honest, courageous look at reality and a sense of the joy of life.
Childhood
It is described in the most famous book, entitled "I can jump through puddles." The boy was in a hurry to be born. He almost got ahead of the midwife who arrived at the last moment. Everyone was waiting for him: two sisters, a mother and a father. This happened on May 2, 1902 in Australia, in the Western District of Victoria, in Nurat. The father, seeing his son, immediately said that it would be a runner and rider, because his legs are strong. Alan Marshall himself thought while he was a kid that he would ride a horse and handle any horse.
School and disease
Shortly after the child began to go to school, a polio epidemic broke out. It is now vaccinated against all children. Then they simply did not exist. Alan Marshall fell ill at age 6 and was never able to physically recover from him. After spending eighteen months in the hospital, he became an invalid, whose destiny is bed and crutches. While he was recovering, he read avidly adventure books and comics. He rejected all attempts to patronize him and sought to do as much as possible himself. Father and mother encouraged all the aspirations of the child, especially the fact that he wanted to share all the activities and activities of his classmates. Alan with his healthy boyish perception of the world did not have the feeling that he was exceptional, that he was a small cripple. With a school enemy, he fought on sticks, climbed into the mouth of an extinct volcano, learned to swim and ride. Here is the stubborn stubborn Alan Marshall (biography). The photo below presents him with a horse that he learned to drive.
His illiterate father had an exceptional pedagogical talent. Parents did not seek solace in religion and did not submit to the "will of God." The father taught his little son to be involved in everything that, seemingly, was denied to him by fate, as well as to empathize and be useful. The driver, who took him on a long trip to the lumberjacks, did not offend Alan with pity. His friend's mother, Joe, also did not notice Alan's crutches. Wandering seasonal workers and swagmen did not moan over the cripple. Everything in the folk environment taught Alan the habit of relying on himself in everything and being able to reach out to someone who is in trouble.
Becoming
The young man dreamed of becoming a writer, but the knowledge that he received at the rural school and business college was not enough. And nobody wanted to hire Marshall with paralyzed legs. Therefore, he was glad to become a clerk in the municipality with beggarly earnings, and an accountant in a shoe factory, and a night watchman. But all that he saw and heard, as well as his thoughts, Alan Marshall wrote in notebooks. Over time, about a hundred of them accumulated. In the thirties, a wave of crisis swept through the country, there were massive layoffs, and the unemployed were imprisoned.
The newspapers, which were published daily, did not unanimously publish Alan's reports on disadvantaged people. "Pictures from the life of the proletariat" was published in only one newspaper, where the journalist wrote about the sweatshop system at General Motors factories, as well as articles against war and fascism and in support of the republic in Spain. At thirty-seven, Marshall becomes editor in a small magazine with an anti-fascist orientation, and then he is elected chairman of the Writers League.
Marriage
Met Olivia Dixon in 1937 Alan Marshall. Personal life gradually arranged. They married on May 30, 1941 in Melbourne. There were two daughters in this marriage. His wife hardly understood his energetic activity. Alan rode the roads of Australia, first in a covered cart, which was harnessed by horses, and in the mid-forties, in a car that was equipped with complex control belts. The upper half of the body was athletic, but completely dry legs let down. The right one had to be amputated. In 1957, after the release of his best novel about childhood, his wife broke up with him shortly before her death. Then Alan lived alone and wrote in newspapers (he had his own column) for women whose lives were broken by drinking husbands.
Conclusion
Marshall believed that all our positive qualities stem from the troubles that happened to us.
He saw his whole life consisting of peaks and plains, and the writer's task was to show that the peaks are achievable. He was a passionate advocate for the disabled. He wrote thousands of letters to children with disabilities, prompting them to follow their dreams and not give up. In 1972 he received the Order of Britain for services to the disabled, in 1981 - the Order of Australia for services to the literature. In 1964, Marshall first visited our country, and later became president of the Australia-USSR Society.
Alan Marshall's ambitious work proves to everyone that a person has no right to bow under the blows of fate. The writer died in 1984 when he was 81 years old.