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Rayna DuBose II
A vibrant athlete who endured a tragic disease, Rayna DuBose has used that same competitive spirit she had on a basketball court to become a top motivational speaker. She is in demand across the country for her message of hope and perseverance, and also serves as a spokesperson for Novartis and the pharmaceutical company’s meningococcal vaccine.
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Rayna DuBose IV
Rayna DuBose’s bright smile is still ever present, especially when she visits Blacksburg and Cassell Coliseum. Among her favorite speaking engagements are summer camps where she can connect with young basketball players.
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Rayna DuBose III
A vibrant athlete who endured a tragic disease, Rayna DuBose has used that same competitive spirit she had on a basketball court to become a top motivational speaker. She is in demand across the country for her message of hope and perseverance, and also serves as a spokesperson for Novartis and the pharmaceutical company’s meningococcal vaccine.
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Rayna DuBose I
A vibrant athlete who endured a tragic disease, Rayna DuBose has used that same competitive spirit she had on a basketball court to become a top motivational speaker. She is in demand across the country for her message of hope and perseverance, and also serves as a spokesperson for Novartis and the pharmaceutical company’s meningococcal vaccine.
The first thing you notice about Rayna DuBose when she walks into a room is what you don’t notice if you know her story.
DuBose doesn’t limp, and from a distance, you have no idea that her arms have been amputated just below the elbow and that her legs are missing under her knees because of her 2002 battle with meningococcal meningitis when she was at Virginia Tech. Her prosthetics have gotten better – at least they’re the right color now to match her smooth, dark skin – since they first became a regular part of her wardrobe.
And even if you could just focus on what Rayna DuBose is missing, you wouldn’t because what she does have is so very special.
“Her smile just lights up a room,” says former Virginia Tech basketball teammate Fran Recchia. “She makes friends instantly. She always has.”
Since DuBose loves basketball, that contagious smile is often compared to that of Earvin “Magic” Johnson as one of the most matchless mugs in the sport. Her dark, dancing eyes are part of the picture, too, engaging and friendly with just a hint of mischief that makes it look like she’s up to something.
And she usually is up to something.
“Oh, my God, that smile and those eyes,” says her college coach, Bonnie Henrickson. “Rayna could talk herself in or out of anything, and I was victim of that for a while until I was able to say, ‘Okay, you’re not getting me on this one.’ She could sell ice to Eskimos.”
Today, nine years after she lost her limbs and after what many would consider losing everything, DuBose is still selling something: her most valuable commodity, herself.
DuBose is carving out a career as one of the top motivational speakers in the country with a story that most wouldn’t believe if they weren’t hearing it right from Rayna DuBose herself.
She may have lost her arms and legs, but her reach has never been greater.
That thought, like most of her thoughts these days, makes DuBose smile. She lives on her own in Owings Mills, near Baltimore, and close to her Columbia, Md., home where her parents, Willie and Andrea, still reside.
She speaks at least three times a month, around the country, from basketball camps to business groups and all manner of meetings and gatherings. According to Andrea Adams, the Michigan-based publicist who works for DuBose, her fees range from $3,000-$5,000.
“She’s very independent,” Adams says. “The only time we assist her is at very large functions.”
Adams, who has been working with DuBose for three years, was with her for an appearance in Texas, and noticed that DuBose’s arm prosthetics weren’t working. One “hand” wasn’t designed to move, and the batteries in her other hand that allowed movement were dead.
“I asked her if she needed me to help put her stud earring in, and she (said), ‘Andrea, I can do this on my own,’” Adams laughs at the memory. “And she did. I’m just not used to seeing someone able to be that independent. Even with no movement in her hands, she was still able to function and do everything on her own.”
DuBose’s competitiveness as an athlete has channeled into a motivation to keep improving as a speaker and making her own way in her daily life. In her initial physical therapy sessions she became frustrated when her therapists weren’t challenging her enough.
“My thing was I didn’t want to feel handicapped,” she says. “I have to live handicapped, but I didn’t want to feel that way myself.”
DuBose doesn’t feel handicapped or challenged any more. In fact, in her speaking appearances, she’s the one who does the challenging.
“I get to motivate people with what I’ve learned through life,” she says simply.
DuBose has empowered herself, beginning with her return to Virginia Tech and earning her undergraduate degree in consumer studies in 2007.
She often wears high heels when she goes out. She has also coached basketball, volunteered at Marriotts Ridge High School in 2009, and worked at several summer camps the last few years.
She fishes for items in her oversized purse just like any other young woman, coming up with her cell phone and deftly texting friends and business contacts. She drives herself around in her own Saturn VUE (“a regular car just like yours”), with no special accommodations, save a handicapped parking decal.
Being athletic and active is a huge part of who she is, and vital to her wellbeing. DuBose says on a typical day, she wakes up at 9 a.m., and goes straight to the gym, where she runs on a treadmill, rides a stationary bike or engages in some type of cardiovascular exercise.
After lunch, she spends a couple of hours on the computer, answering emails, doing paperwork and working on her schedule. She has just returned home from a speaking engagement in Pittsburgh, and is readying for a speech to high school athletes, sponsored by The Baltimore Sun. She’s trying to fit in more motivational appearances around her work as a spokesperson for the pharmaceutical company Novartis’ game-changing meningococcal vaccine.
In the summer, she loves to go to basketball camps to spread her message to young players and be around their energy and enthusiasm, the same traits that once drove her on the hardwoods.
“I always tell them I don’t have my real game of basketball anymore, but this is my new game,” she says, that smile giving way to a determination. “And I want to be the best. I’d like people to know my name and be excited if they find out, ‘Oh, Rayna DuBose is the speaker!’ I’m competing the same way I always did, just in a different way now.”
Virginia Tech Associate Athletic Director Sharon McCloskey was one of the first people who pushed DuBose toward the podium.
“I talked with her more than once about this,” McCloskey recalls. “I said, ‘You have the perfect message for college students, and that’s get your degree because you never know what’s going to happen.’”
DuBose, like many athletes, harbored dreams of pro basketball. She left home in the summer of 2001, heading south to play at Virginia Tech and to make a name for herself as a burgeoning, barely-below-blue-chip big girl for Henrickson’s hurrying Hokies.
“When we were recruiting her, we saw a gifted, long, athletic player that had the skills to play facing up or back to the basket,” recalls Henrickson, now the head coach at the University of Kansas. “We felt she would really grow as a player but she was behind some gifted players when she got (there).”
The 6-foot, 3-inch DuBose played sparingly as a freshman, appearing in just 13 games and averaging only 4.8 points and 2.4 rebounds. She tallied 10 points and five rebounds against both Radford and Northwestern State, while playing behind All-Big East Conference Ieva Kublina, and close friend Erin Gibson of Galax.
“Rayna came in like most kids, had some challenges and had to buckle down and find the consistency you have to play with day in and day out,” says Henrickson. “I thought she had really turned the corner and had a bright future.”
The Hokies were 21-11 and had just wrapped up play in the Women’s National Invitational Tournament when that future changed entirely.
DuBose became sick soon after the season, and doctors treated her for flu-like symptoms. The morning of April 2, the team was to reshoot a team photo and DuBose felt so “horrible” she didn’t want to get out of bed.
Gibson and Recchia carried DuBose from their dorm room in Cochrane Hall across the street to Cassell Coliseum. “I was so weak that Erin actually held me up the whole time we were taking the picture,” says DuBose.
And that’s about all DuBose remembers about that day. Her blood pressure fell and she lapsed into a three-week coma. Doctors at Montgomery Regional Hospital had DuBose, now in critical condition, airlifted to the University of Virginia’s Medical Center.
DuBose doesn’t remember that her lungs collapsed, and her heart, kidneys and liver all failed. The rare bacterial infection also caused her blood to stop circulating.
“When I finally got to see her in ICU, I held her hand and it was cold,” says Henrickson. “I put my hand on her shoulder and it was warm. I moved my hands to where one hand was hot and the other was cold, and it was almost exactly where they amputated.”
DuBose accepted her fate with remarkable grace.
“One day they were all around the foot of my bed and they just kind of told me that they were going to have to amputate all of my limbs,” she says. “There wasn’t anything they could do because everything was dead. There wasn’t anything I could do but cry for a second and say, ‘Let’s go.’”
They took her arms four inches below the elbow, and her legs were amputated six inches below her knees.
“There were so many nightmares that I don’t really remember what’s true and what’s not,” DuBose says. “I was waking out of a coma and saying, ‘When am I going to take my finals?’”
Much tougher tests awaited the then-18-year-old, hospitalized in Charlottesville for 97 days before she was ambulanced to Good Samaritan Hospital in Baltimore. DuBose was in Good Samaritan for a month-and-a-half, and was then allowed to go home and continue rehabilitation as an outpatient. Gibson and Recchia both visited her in the Medical Center ICU, and again several times when she got home.
“It was really hard in the beginning because Rayna didn’t want to talk to anyone, didn’t want to go out to the mall or to see a movie,” says Recchia. “And that’s just not Rayna. She’s such a positive person, such a social person.”
DuBose was self-conscious, a feeling that didn’t dissipate when her first new arms weren’t the right color. They were white and new to her, and she was already unsure of herself in the social settings in which she had once thrived.
“I had to learn everything over again – waking up, brushing my teeth, combing my hair, taking a bath, using a computer, whatever,” she says. “It took time, and I’ve never had patience. You have to have patience as an amputee because you’re not going to get things on the first, second, third or fourth try. It takes 10, 11, 12, 13 tries.”
Beyond relearning how to care for herself, DuBose had to overcome how others viewed her. “I was always used to people looking at me and saying, ’Oh, she’s pretty. She has a pretty smile,’ or ‘She’s great at what she does.’ Now people were looking at me like, ‘Oh, my God, what happened to her?’ So it took me awhile to get over that and speaking definitely helped.”
Her friends are amazed at the effort DuBose expends making those around her comfortable. DuBose’s positive personality shines through, and now she has an outlet that puts her back in control of her life.
DuBose likes “the spotlight” that comes with speaking. It reminds her of when thousands watched her play basketball in Cassell. And, she’s good at it.
In Lawrence, Kan. three years ago, Henrickson tried to comfort DuBose before she spoke at the Jayhawks’ summer camp, telling her it would be an informal setting and not to worry. It was the coach who didn’t need to worry.
“From the first minutes, I was just, ‘wow,’” says Henrickson. “The inflection, the humor, the self deprecation, the stuff that’s most difficult and you either have it or you don’t, she had it. I remember sitting there, crying, and I already knew the story.”
The 2002 HBO “Real Sports” segment on DuBose is often a precursor to her speaking, and then she can just focus in on her message, which is personal yet universal.
“It’s about perseverance, overcoming tragedy and adversities that are thrown at us every single day,” DuBose says. “I always say you have two options: We can lay down and be down or we can get up and make the most out of it. For me, it was just finally realizing that God had a different plan for me and basketball wasn’t where I was supposed to go.
“I’m helping people become aware of what we all can endure.”
For a video of Rayna Dubose and more, visit raynadubose.net