Libertyville student adapts to challenges

For Alec Tranel, life is about constantly adapting.

Because the Libertyville High School incoming junior uses a wheelchair, he's learning to operate his customized car and motorcycle — a three-wheeler he calls Crippy — with just his hands.

To earn the required merit badges to achieve his Eagle Scout rank, Alec hitched his chair to a four-wheeler to navigate the rough terrain at Wisconsin's Camp Makajawan.

Through a hospitality room and nightly activities he set up as part of his service project, Alec inspired junior athletes trying to qualify for the Paralympics to socialize and share with one another.

“What this young man has accomplished is just phenomenal,” said Deron Smith, Boy Scouts of America public relations director. “It's a great testament to him and his character.”

Of the 57,000 boys in the U.S. who became Eagle Scouts last year, Alec was among fewer than 100 with severe disabilities, Smith said.

He did so while holding his troop's coveted leadership positions and switching out just four merit badges due to his physical limitations.

“If you're willing to adapt and go through a lot of complications for the outcome, you can do just about anything,” the 16-year-old said.

It's an attitude — and a sometimes stubborn one — that Alec has developed since his physical maladies began more than a decade ago.

At 6 years old, he had surgery to replace an abnormally growing vertebra that was dangerously compressing his spinal cord.

Doctors said there was a 10 percent chance he wouldn't be able to walk afterward, and Alec ended up in the unlucky minority.

Still unsure of the source of his back problems, doctors performed about 10 other surgeries, including four on his hip in the past year alone. He's optimistic the worst is behind him, but acknowledges he's in pain due to a dislocated hip and faces future hip, jaw and face operations.

“I will always have problems; I can't get away from that,” Alec said. “I admit it's hard when something shows up again that I thought we had already dealt with.”

And though he loves school and says he doesn't feel judged there, he can feel the typical teenage self-consciousness creep up. Like when his friends pick a lunch place with stairs and have to carry him.

He gets through it all with amazing confidence and wit.

His mother, Kathleen, jokes that he can get in trouble and talk back with the best of them, and that he refuses to heed cautionary tales or scale back his ambitions.

To work on his tennis technique, despite a lack of peers who play, Alec takes on the likes of famed Paralympian Paul Moran and able-bodied adults, knowing full well he'll likely take a beating on the court.

He also skis using a two-ski sled with poles and a brake, swims and plays wheelchair basketball. His team, the GLASA Waves (Great Lakes Adaptive Sports Association), took 10th in April at the National Wheelchair Basketball Association national championships in Golden, Colo.

Alec is eager to share his experiences and philosophy and gets the chance to do so every now and then, speaking at GLASA meetings and service organizations like Kiwanis and Lions clubs.

He also gave a speech he wrote called “Enjoying Life with Obstacles” at a convention in Canada that his dad, financial planner Roch Tranel, helped organize.

But his real calling is teaching, and he hopes to get into world history, sociology and psychology.

“I just want to inspire, and I think teaching will allow me to affect kids every day instead of just standing at a podium, talking about my life and walking away,” he said. “I'm disabled, but I like to project that I'm able to do anything.”

• Elena Ferrarin and Kimberly Pohl are always looking for Suburban Standouts to profile. If you know of someone whose story just wows you, please send a note including name, town, email and phone contacts for you and the nominee to standouts@dailyherald.com.

Alec Tranel

<b>Age:</b> 16

<b>Hometown:</b> Libertyville

<b>School:</b> Libertyville High School

<b>Who inspires you?</b> Jeremy Lade

<b>What's on your iPod?</b> “This Life,” by Curtis Stigers & The Forest Rangers

What book are you reading? “Guns, Germs and Steel”

<b>The three words that best describe you?</b> Funny, stubborn, inspirational.