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Daniel Ellman plays with a different set of rules.

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CART WALDMAN
Special to the Jewish News

T

hough he has never walked, Daniel Ellman
doesn't think "disability's
"I don't even notice it," Ellman says of the
wheelchair he sits in Watching him balance
the chair's front two wheels in the air while whackina
his older brother Michael with a pillow, it is easy to see
that Daniel is a t pical teen and one-of-a-kind at the
same time.
Born in 1983 with spina bifida, a severe defect of
the backbone and spinal cord, Ellman endured fiNT
surgeries by age .2 1/2. He used braces and a walker to
simulate walking early on but traded them for a small
scale wheelchair by first grade. It was too cumbersome
simply to get from point A to IV says Elliman. "I could
get around much faster with the wheelchair."

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