He was told more than once that he would never move again. He kept moving.
The story begins on a working farm in LaSalle County, Illinois, on land Jay's ancestors settled in 1844. By five he was gathering eggs before school. By seven his father had co-signed a bank loan in his name so the boy would learn what responsibility weighs. Those roots held through everything that came next.
The Marine Corps at nineteen. Sergeant in seventeen months. Then a night in 1969 when Jay was rushing an injured teammate to medical help and drove into an unlit truck in total darkness. His heart stopped on the table. Doctors stepped away. He came back anyway, through a coma and more than eight months in traction, and that was only the first time.
A drunk driver took his heart the second time. A broken neck on Independence Day 1981 paralyzed him from the shoulders down at 31. Between and after those days came the businesses built from hospital beds, the sales teams led on crutches and leg braces, the U.S. patent, the children and grandchildren, the faith that held, and the ten two-letter words he has repeated for a lifetime.
The Strength Within You is that whole record: the farm, the Corps, the deaths, the recoveries, and the plain, transferable lessons each one surrendered. Jay dictated it over a full year. Readers finish it asking one question about their own fight: if he kept going through that, what is actually stopping me?
"IF IT IS TO BE, IT IS UP TO ME."
The ten words at the center of the book
"How is this man still alive?"
John Passadino, Lens of Hopefulness, after reading the book before their interview
