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Original editorial correspondence regarding Joni Eareckson Tada
A diving accident in 1967 left Joni Eareckson, then seventeen, a quadriplegic in a wheelchair, without the use of her hands. During her rehabilitation, Joni spent long months learning how to paint with a brush between her teeth. She used that method to write this letter to Zondervan’s managing editor at the time, Al Bryant, who had seen her on the Today Show. Bryant forwarded her letter with this accompanying memo to Pat Zondervan, head of the company, saying, “If she can capture her personality on paper, we’ll have a winner in this.” Her resulting memoir, Joni, has more than three million copies in print in over forty languages.
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