Lesbian athlete and author Angela Madsen has passed away after trying to row from California to Hawai’i. Her lifeless body was found in the Pacific Ocean after the US Coast Guard was contacted. Madsen had radioed her wife, sayng she was going into the water, but failed to check in again.
Madsen had been at sea for 60 days, and was 1,275 nautical miles from her destination in Hawai’i. Madsen, who was a 3-time Paralympian and former Marine, wanted to fix her bow anchor. When she was found, she was tethered to her boat.
Madsen’s voyage was the subject of a documentary film. She wanted to be the first paraplegic and oldest woman – she was 60 – to row the Pacific Ocean alone. She knew and accepted the risks of the journey. When she failed to contact her wife, Debra, the Coast Guard was contacted.
Her autobiography, Rowing Against the Wind, was published in 2014.
Madsen, who became paraplegic after tripping in a basketball game (someone landed on her back) and after mistakes were made during a subsequent surgery. She held no animosity toward the staff at the Veterans Hospital. “Medical mistakes happen in all hospital settings,” she wrote.
Her autobiography reads as if written with anger, by someone in denial. Maybe that was the constant daily pain speaking. Maybe it was a human being trying to find her truth.
“No one chooses to be disabled or to endure a life of pain and suffering. But like everyone else on the planet, disabled or not, we have a choice to either live and walk in truth…or not…
As I collected my thoughts and memories to write this book, I wished that I had spent more time walking in the truth. No matter how hard or easy it was to pull those thoughts and feelings together – some tragic, some victorious – I had to stay on the path of truth…
I do know that whatever my purpose is in this life, my differently-abled, physically-challenged, broken-down, beaten-up body seems to be the vehicle required for me to achieve it.”
Madsen’s words can inspire, enlighten and infuriate. Her true legacy, not a book but a life of doing brave things, lives on.
