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On Wednesday, HK Derryberry and Jim Bradford visited the students of Chambers County School District to tell his story of overcoming adversity and proving, in his words, that “the only disability any of us have in life is a negative attitude.”

In 1990, in Nashville, Tennessee, a little boy was born three months premature to a mother who was killed in an automobile accident. 

Derryberry came into the world already fighting for his life. He was born blind and was diagnosed with cerebral palsy due to a brain bleed. He spent the next 96 days in Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s neonatal intensive care unit. 

After he was discharged from the hospital, he was raised by his grandmother. At the start of his life, it seemed like it would be a constant uphill battle for Derryberry but it has also been one of overcoming obstacles. 

“His grandmother enrolled him at the Tennessee School for the Blind, and he became the youngest student in the history of the school, and the school is more than 100 years old at that point,” Bradford said.

Despite his right arm being paralyzed by a stroke in the NICU, Derryberry persisted in learning to read and write Braille one-handed. He broke another record at the school, becoming the only person in its 150-year history to write Braille with one hand. 

Bradford was a Tennessee businessman who happened to meet an eight-year-old Derryberry at a chicken shop one day in 1999. After striking up a conversation and learning Derryberry’s story, the two became friends. At the end of their conversation, Jim remembered, he said, “‘I hope to see you again.’” 

“And I didn’t realize what I just did because, on October 16, it will be a 25-year verbal contract that I made with this little boy,” he added.

Since he was ten, Bradford said, Derryberry has shown signs of impeccable memory recall. In fact, researchers at Vanderbilt Medical Center’s Memory Clinic later discovered that he is one of only five or six people in the world with a medical diagnosis known as hyperthymesia, or Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory.

That means that he can remember an abnormally large number of life experiences in vivid detail. Since the discovery, researchers at the Memory Clinic have been hopeful that more research into his condition could lead to a breakthrough for those suffering memory loss. 

However, that doesn’t mean that he didn’t face obstacles in school.

After meeting the family, Bradford began helping his grandmother with Derryberry’s IEP (Individualized Education Program) meetings. They had placed Derryberry in special education classes which his grandmother fought against. After some trial and error, he was placed in a sixth-grade level class instead of eighth-grade and by the end of the year, he was on the honor roll. Derryberry did so well that they allowed him to skip seventh grade and move on to eighth.

“By skipping seventh grade, he graduated with a high school diploma 30 days before his 22nd birthday. Pretty amazing. He took every course required in the state of Tennessee,” Bradford said. 

“Anything in life is possible if you work hard,” Derryberry said during the presentation. 

Since graduating high school, Derryberry and Bradford have remained friends and have begun appearing as motivational speakers. Since 2014, they have made over 175 appearances, sharing the story of their friendship with more than 150,000 people. 

“I encourage all of you to always be positive,” Derryberry said to the Valley High School students.