Draw a character sketch of William …

William O. Douglas was born in 1898 at Maine. After graduating he adopted the profession of teaching but he soon got tired of this job and adopted the legal career. He served in the court as a justice for a longer period of life. Since childhood he had a mind for swimming but he got aversion for water when a wave swept over and buried him. On the second occassion at the age of ten or eleven, a big burly boy tossed him up and threw deep in the pool that created stark fear in his mind. He made three attempts but every time he went down deeper and deeper. He became unconscious when he got up he was vomiting beside the pool.

The terror of water followed him wherever he went. To get rid of it, he made a strong determination. He decided to overcome his fear through his ‘will’. He engaged an instructor who perfected Douglas in swimming. He gave him hundreds of exercises and taught him to exhale and inhale in water. The practice went on for three months and Douglas was able to recede his terror. Then after more exercises, the instructor ordered him to dive himself. He swam across and back the lake. He was now completely out of fear. He stated that a fear is nothing but all we have to fear is fear itself. Its reality it is the “will to live” that removes all our fears, terrors, troubled and difficulties in case we struggle hard and make a strong determination to materialize it.