A hard-working farm kid from the Midwest who refused to let anything hold him back.
Jay Setchell grew up on a family farm in LaSalle County, Illinois, on land his ancestors settled in 1844. By the age of five he was gathering eggs and feeding livestock. By seven, his father had co-signed a bank loan so Jay could learn accountability. The values planted in that rich soil never left him: responsibility, preparation, faith, and an unshakable belief that if it is to be, it is up to me.
In 1968, Jay enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. He made sergeant in 17 months and was assigned to covert operations with the Criminal Investigation Division. On November 12, 1969, his life changed forever. A catastrophic accident left him in a coma with compound fractures, a crushed jaw, a punctured lung, third-degree burns, and nearly a full year in the Naval Hospital. It was the first of three times Jay would be clinically dead, meaning his heart stopped beating and his breathing ceased, only to be resuscitated and brought back.
The second came in a head-on collision in rural Illinois. The third came on Independence Day, 1981, when a pool jump fractured four vertebrae in his neck, leaving him paralyzed from the shoulders down at 31 years old.
Jay chose differently. He regained partial function, went back to work on crutches and leg braces, started and ran multiple businesses, co-invented a product that earned a U.S. patent, raised children and grandchildren, and survived MRSA with a 75% mortality rate. Today he lives with syringomyelia, myelomalacia, and Brown-Sequard Syndrome simultaneously, a combination so rare it affects fewer than 2% of severe spinal cord injury patients.