Conrad's Legacy Lives on through Conrad Smiles
Conrad’s Legacy Lives On
His life will be remembered in the hearts of many for years to come and his story leaves a legacy that continues. Read more about Conrad’s life and legacy through two featured stories below.
Story from the San Antonio Report
Conrad and his grandfather were in the backyard, playing. The grandfather went inside to get a drink of water, pausing to load a few dishes in the dishwasher. When he looked out the window, he saw what he thought was a bundle of clothes floating in the swimming pool. It was Conrad.
Underwater for unknown minutes, the toddler suffered major brain damage.
You would think such a nightmarish calamity, a disaster born of a moment’s unwitting inattention, would have ripped apart Conrad’s extended family permanently, with no healing available. But that’s not what happened.
The family instead closed ranks around the child, putting all their focus on helping Conrad overcome his injury to the fullest extent possible.
I wrote in my story that Liz’s ability to forgive sprang “from certain givens. For one, any energy she expends in anger means energy taken away from Conrad. For another, what her father-in-law did was simply negligent. And who can cast the first stone in that regard? Who hasn’t run a red light or talked on a cell phone in the car?”
But the larger story about what happened to Conrad involves all that came after. Some doctors told the Tullises to institutionalize their son — that he was beyond having any sort of meaningful life…
The first 17 months of Conrad Tullis’s life were the only months he spent outside constant care and in a wheelchair, but it certainly was not the most remarkable time in his short 20-year life. Watch the featured video here.