Good Morning American surprised Dr. Feranmi Okanlami, the director of Disability Services and Adaptive Sports at the University of Michigan, with $1 million on Thursday morning.
GMA host Robin Roberts made the surprise at the university during the show.
Okanlami was born in Nigeria and raised in Indiana, but suffered a spinal cord injury at a pool party in 2013.
"His cervical injury was high enough that most people who have that are not expected to ever be able to walk or stand," his mother said, according to GMA. "They will say, 'Oh, you are quadriplegic, you can't do that.' And he will say, 'why can't we try?' And so at every stage throughout his rehab, he continued to push."
He had gone to medical school and had gotten into an orthopedic residence surgery program when the accident happened.
He eventually became a physician, and continued working to gain movement, even coming up with the catchphrase "disabusing disability."
"Dr. O was a high performance athlete -- but it wasn't until that he acquired a disability that he then learned about adaptive sport," Erik Robeznieks, the assistant director of adaptive sports at the University of Michigan, said to GMA. "He attributes access to sport as one of the key reasons that he was able to find the his new passions."
The money came from the Craig H. Neilsen Foundation, which helps those with spinal cord injuries.
"This is not a me thing, this is an us thing," Okanlami said to GMA. "The fact that they were able to orchestrate this somehow amidst all of the other things they've been doing -- through COVID, through family deaths, through injury, through sickness -- so the emotion is about every single person here and those that aren't here, those at Michigan, those at other institutions and in other country, those on other continents with and without disabilities that have supported us to get to where we are."
