Tim Ulmer, Epilepsy Gangster’s creator and host, is quite the advocate for
people with epilepsy. He facilitates the prominent support group that he
started over a decade ago. A medical information company, Health Union,
recently added him as a moderator-writer, and his columns about living with
epilepsy can be read at no charge at EpilepsyDisease.com.
A head injury at the age of 2 caused his epilepsy. Both of his parents, Tom
and Rosie, were school teachers in Central Illinois. Because their natures
were very positive, he was encouraged to try different whatever activities
seemed interesting and to never think that epilepsy ruled him. This led awards
for teen-employment, speech, and acting. He received an award for an essay
on energy in the White House Rose Garden by the President of the United
States Jimmy Carter.
Tim’s goal to carry on both of his families’ heritage of military service, going
back to the American Revolution wasn’t discouraged by them. So, he became
politically active in order to get his congressman’s nomination to the U.S.
Naval Academy. The family knew that his epilepsy could be a restriction, but
his parents never tried to dissuade him. It was his life. Privately, they knew
that failing at goals is a part of life, and the sooner people learn to fail, they
more confident they’ll be to try other things.
Each of the American armed services rejected Tim’s effort to serve. It was
painful for him to accept it. Mulling it over, he determined that service to
Americans had been his underlying motive all along, and saw that his
politically activities were another way to do that. (His parents had been
adamant that when God closes one door opens another!) Before being old
enough to have the opportunity to vote for an American president, he was
elected to be a delegate to nominate one! Voters in an 18-county district
chose him to represent them at the 1984 Republican National Convention and
nominate Pres. Ronald Reagan for a second term in office. Tim and another
of the youngest delegates wanted this opportunity to be more than rubber-
stamping Pres. Reagan’s re-election. They wanted to do something important
for their generation. He researched and drafted a resolution for renewable
energy that was accepted in the 1984 Republican National Party Platform
decades before the realization of climate change. NBC interviewed the pair in
its network coverage about the irony of their youth and nominating the oldest
presidential candidate to that time!
After college, he relocated to Chicago in the hopes of earning money that
would finance his future in politics. Long hours and severe stress from
several failed business ventures made the epilepsy that had been controlled
most of his life become savage, and practically daily. Seizures caused him to
have five auto accidents, several of which were multi-vehicular (and finally
with a semi-truck). Miraculously, no one was ever injured, including Tim.
Bitterly, it meant losing his job, independent housing, and any vision of his
political ambitions. Tim credits the emotional recovery while residing with his
parents to a Chicago friend. She called him nearly every night to reassure
him that it had not been his time to die during those accidents, and that God
had a “mission” for him.
Once again, God shut one door while opening another. His epilepsy qualified
him with the State of Illinois for financial assistance to pursue a master’s
degree. That time, he studied television production (and still considering how
important it was to politics). It was exciting to him. When interning at a
internationally popular daytime drama, executives were impressed by his work
enough to start talking about hiring him for a permanent position. But after he
had a seizure, they told him to “—leave by noontime”. A leading sitcom was
arranging to hire him until it learned his reason for not driving; they would
have proceeded had the reason been because of substance abuse, but not
because of epilepsy.
For a second time, he returned to live with his parents, and started producing
news features for a local TV station. Five years later, a source in one of his
stories offered him a job teaching English at a university in China. It was fun
and he made many friends. Very few of them ever met a foreigner and
practically all of them had never met an American. His congeniality was not
what propaganda described Americans to be like. And, none of them had
ever seen an epileptic seizure until he had several during classes (on different
days).
University administrators told him that his epilepsy risked being a “political
disaster” for them if he was to get hurt. At the same time, his students were
amazed that he’d been brave enough to journey alone to a foreign land with
his “sickness”. Many became dumbfounded by the confidence with which he
assured them that because God had saved his life in car wrecks, he knew
God would save him from any calamities there. He was also fired from a
position at law university in Shanghai for the same reason. But students at all
schools were fascinated by that faith.
His decades of aching to make a difference for others ended when Tim
realized that there was a purpose for being epileptic! If it wasn’t for his
seizures making him move between 5 Chinese cities, he met many more
hundreds of more people than if he’d stayed at that first school. God was
letting him serve America, but as a goodwill ambassador rather than as the
Navy fighter pilot he’d dreamt of being. More importantly, he discovered that
even though he’d had no training, he was an important source of information
about God to those inquiring people who had been denied the opportunity to
investigate Christianity. (He authored a book about the experience available
on this site).
It’s his steadfast belief that God’s reward to him for accepting that mission is
his wife he met while teaching there. He remains a loving husband and
father, and is determined to help others find out how to make the most of
themselves what purposes might be met by their epilepsy.
Epilepsy Gangster
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