SALT LAKE CITY — Before he became an independently wealthy financier, before he claimed three jiujitsu world championships, before he served 15 years on the Civil Rights Commission in Washington, D.C., before he became a husband and a father and a philanthropist — before all that, Russell Redenbaugh lay in a hospital bed at the age of 17 and heard the doctors whisper to his mother that her son would be blind the rest of his life. And he mentally did cartwheels.
He wasn’t happy he was blind, far from it, but he was thrilled to finally know, after months of surgeries followed by more surgeries, what the score was.
Now he could get on with life.
He then and there identified certain things he would not tolerate: He wouldn’t be dependent, he wouldn’t be poor, and he wouldn’t be unmarriable. Those were the big uh-uhs!
The big uh-huh! was he would live in the sighted world.
He wasn’t sure where he was going, but he knew where he wasn’t.
Those “declarations” that “shifted the narrative” of his life made all the difference.
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The explosion that cost him his eyesight was his own darn fault.
On May 19, 1962, the sophomore-almost-junior at Olympus High School was busy in the garage on a Saturday morning, literally doing his part to help fulfill President John F. Kennedy’s goal of America sending a man to the moon by the end of the 1960s.
His rocket ship was all set to be tested when his homemade jet fuel ignited before it was supposed to, blowing a hole out of the garage wall and sending Russell to the hospital in critical condition.
Six weeks and more than two-dozen surgeries later, he emerged from the hospital — where his parents and his uncle, former U.S. Senator Jake Garn, had kept a constant vigil — with mangled hands, the outright loss of one eye and the other hanging by a thread.
After yet more surgeries and bed rest at a hospital in San Francisco, by February the doctors rendered their verdict that that eye was gone, too.
At that moment, no one would have — or could have — foreseen Russell Redenbaugh’s future:
• After graduating on time with the class of '64 from Olympus High, the former “indifferent at best” student majored in business at the University of Utah and finished first in his class.
• At the Wharton School of Business in Philadelphia, he earned his MBA and finished fifth in his class.
• As an economist and financier, first in Philadelphia and later in Silicon Valley, he gained world renown as an investor and strategist, making millions for his clients and millions more for himself.
• Appointed by President George H.W. Bush in 1990, he served on the Civil Rights Commission until 2005, the commission's first disabled member.
• At the age of 50, he began training in the Brazilian martial art of jiujitsu and proceeded to win consecutive world championships in 2003, 2004 and 2005 — all against sighted opponents.
• • •
How was he able to pull off all of the above and more?
It all dates back to that hospital bed promise.
“I vowed not to let it stop me from living a life that I defined — not one decided by others,” writes Russell in his book, “Shift the Narrative: A Blind Man’s Vision for Rewriting the Stories That Limit Us.”
"While becoming blind was an accident, my journey from welfare to wealth was not.”
The book was recently released by Morgan James Publishing and is available on Amazon.
Besides an abiding desire to “leave a record for my kids,” Russell, at 72, says he decided to write his life story to hopefully help inspire others to reset their narratives when circumstances rearrange their lives.
“I believe in the curation of your narratives, especially those that say, ‘You can’t do that because. … Because you’re too young, too old, too short, too female, too blind.'"
There is little value in being a victim, he says. “Of course I’m an investor and an economist, so I think about things in relationship to rate of return. Being a victim, being on welfare, being a protected group does produce a rate of return, but it isn’t high. You get some sympathy, usually from the wrong people. You get the scraps.”
At 17, lying in a hospital bed in San Francisco, learning he would never see again, he made the decision not to be a victim.
“Everything was a great relief after that,” he says. “That was the dark night of the soul, but it ended, and then the alternatives were to stay in darkness or find the light, and it was not a complicated decision.”