Success Stories

Handsome, 26-year-old Jimmy Wilson has come a long way since a lonely night in 1944 when his Army plane crashed against a Vermont mountainside. That was the night he lost both hands and both feet. The Government fitted him with a set of artificial limbs, the sympathetic public--through newspaper campaigns--showered him with $105,000, and Jimmy himself did the rest.

Last week, jaunty Jimmy Wilson provided one of the most cheering newsphotos of the week. Wearing a smile as wide as his snappy bow tie, he was shown out walking with pretty, 23-year-old Dorothy Mortensen, a Jacksonville, Fla. drama student. They will be married, he announced proudly, on June 8, three days after his graduation. A straight-B student, Jimmy Wilson has breezed through the University of Florida pre-law school on his own power. Proud of his ability to handle the leather straps and metal rods which replaced his limbs, he drives an automobile, writes his own exams and takes notes in longhand.

Jimmy Wilson was one of the two quadruple amputees among U.S. soldiers in World War II. The other, 31-year-old Master Sergeant Frederic Hensel, was staked by public-spirited Southerners and Midwesterners to $65,000, now owns and operates a 143-acre farm north of Birmingham, Ala.

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