Last fall Tigerillustrated.com released a week-long series exploring some of the deeper layers of Dabo Swinney's life and leadership by listening to various voices who have witnessed the inner workings of it.

In this in-depth series, our subscribers heard from a group of well-connected people who shared their personal stories of how Swinney has transformed not just a football program, but also an entire athletic department, university and surrounding community.

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For part one of the series we spoke with Swinney's mother - Carol McIntosh - who never liked anyone telling her she couldn't do something. She always had an optimistic attitude, even under the bleakest circumstances imaginable.

Sound familiar?

"You want to know where my toughness comes from?" Dabo says now. "You want to know where my grit comes from? My will to achieve something better? It comes from the example my mother set for me my whole life."

Tigerillustrated.com will release part II of this series on Friday. But first, Part 1 of The Story Of Dabo and McIntosh’s own against-all-odds story, in her own words:

I was the youngest of four children, born a 10-pound, healthy baby girl. But that didn’t last long. I was 2 years old when I contracted polio. I went into isolation in a hospital in Birmingham, an hour away from our home in Alabaster where my mother lived with my three siblings.

I spent many weeks in isolation. I spent time in an iron lung to help me breathe. The doctors told my mother I wouldn’t walk again and would never have a normal life. My mother was not allowed to stay with me when I was in isolation. She wasn’t even allowed to be in the same room; the closest she could get was looking through a glass window as the nurses took care of me and the other babies. So she had to leave me and go home. Later in life she would tell me that her thought on the way back home in those days was: “Well, I’ll either never see her alive again or she’ll be a cripple for the rest of her life.”

That is what polio did to children back then; there were even some adults who had it. But it left you crippled. If you didn’t die, you ended up crippled and you never got over it. You’re never cured if you have polio. It is preventable with the vaccine. But once you have polio, it is with you until the day you die. So I have struggled with that since I was 2.

My mother was one of the toughest ladies I have ever known. I cannot imagine what it’s like to have to leave your 2-year-old baby, lifeless and not expected to live. I cannot imagine what it was like for her to have to hand me over, leave me and go back home.

They thought I probably wasn’t going to make it. At one point my mother went back home and started preparing to bury me. She even purchased a burial policy. Later in life, she looked back and told me: “All I can say is that you were such a little fighter.” The doctors told her I fought with everything I had to live. I did that throughout my childhood. I had that mentality to fight. To survive.

My mother was also having to deal with doing it all alone. I was 2 months old when my parents separated. From that point until I was around 40, I never knew my dad. He was never a part of my life. He never came to the hospital. He never sent money or sent my mother money to help with anything. I remember my oldest sister later telling me that many times she would come home from school and find my mother crying. She would ask her: “Momma, are you missing the baby?” And my mother would respond that, yes, she missed me so much. Early on when I was in isolation, she would ride the train from Alabaster to Birmingham and then back.

As time went on, my condition improved to the point where I could be removed from the iron lung. At that point I started all of the grueling exercising and therapy. And I remember the hot water. I would be lowered down into these huge pools of extremely hot water, and I thought I was going to be scalded to death. The purpose of the hot water was to limber the limbs; polio had stiffened my neck, my whole body and my limbs. So to prepare me for therapy they would lower me into this water every day. This was when I was 2, 3 and 4 years old.

At some point my mother noticed there was something different about how polio had affected me, compared to others. It left me weakened from my waist up and affected my upper body, but not my legs. If polio affected your legs you had no strength or use of them, never growing and never developing any muscles. These people were in big, heavy braces just dragging themselves around. Some were on crutches that held their arms up. At the time I thought: “You know, I’m so thankful.” It was better for your arms to be affected by polio than your legs.

I couldn’t raise my arms. I couldn’t use them. I couldn’t use my hands. So at first I was put into body braces that came around my body, under my arms so they could help keep my arms up. And still to this day, you can see the tremors in my hands and the atrophy. That’s what polio did to me. So I wore those braces until they would have to be changed, and then I would get a new brace. And that went on and on and on.

My upper body was so weak that I developed a bad case of scoliosis, a severe curving of the spine. Because the polio attacked my muscles, I was temporarily paralyzed. And it was drawing me way over to my left side. My body was curved so badly that had I not had corrective surgery and braces, I would have remained curved over had I lived. That’s when my mother realized something was wrong, really wrong. Even with the braces, she would take the braces off just to bathe me and put them back on. But my body would still flop to the left. So my mom took me back to the Crippled Children’s Clinic and Hospital in Birmingham. My body had to be encased as I continued to grow so it would remain straight until I was old enough to have surgery.

I was put in a full body cast and spent 14 months in it. At the time I had long hair; my mother had let it grow out into a long ponytail. And the day they were going to put me in that body cast, they had to cut my ponytail off and basically shave my head. I was almost 9 years old, and I thought that was the most terrifying thing for them to do. My mom wasn’t there; they wouldn’t allow her to be there with me. She did ask them to save my ponytail. So they did, and they put it into a plastic bag and they gave it to her and she kept it for years.

I knew every inch of that hospital, from the basement up to the fifth floor. On the third floor, one end was for the girls and one end was for the boys. The fourth floor was for infants only. Fifth floor were the residents. Offices were on the first floor, and one end was for the adult polio patients. Second floor was for surgery. The basement was the casting room and the brace room, and where you would see the doctors.

They took me down to the casting room to put on the body cast, spreading me out. The body cast came around my head to the back of my head, and then all the way down to my knees. Remember, I’m 9 years old. They spread me out and they started wrapping me with this plaster. If you ever had a broken leg or broken arm, imagine that plaster covering your entire body. It was done all around my head, everywhere.

I don’t remember crying. I don’t remember screaming. I think God gave me a peace. I think I was born with it, actually. To be left with my mother never around me, to be left with all of these strangers and to go through all of that, I think God just touched me and gave me a peace. That is my only explanation.

I stayed in that body cast for months. It’s hard to get an education at your bedside, but that’s what I did. I was schooled in that hospital. I had a teacher that came to my bedside every day. Her name was Bess Lambert, and I will never forget this lady. I just thought she was an angel. She would come to my bedside every morning, and the first thing she would do was read the Bible to me. That’s unheard of now, but back then you could do that. She would read the Bible to me every single day, and her favorite verse must’ve been Ecclesiastes 3 because she read that to me every day. So that became one of my favorite verses.

Another one is “I can do all things through Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:13), and I knew all my life I could do that. So from a very young age I was introduced to Jesus and scripture and having faith and all these things. But I think I just took it on myself to have that strong faith and rely on it to get me through those times, and to be positive and not feel sorry for myself.

So she would read me Ecclesiastes 3 every day and at first I thought: “Why do you read that to me every day? Maybe read another?” Then I realized it was giving me all of this hope because it said there is a time for everything, and that brought hope. That’s what I lived on through those years. Hope.

We would do reading, writing and math. She would read to me and I would read to her. And I still wasn’t really able to use my arms at that time. But she would take my hand and we would hold it up, and she would teach me to write a letter. Just A, B, C or whatever. Those were some of my early years of schooling.

People used to ask me all the time: “What did you do to pass the time?” There wasn’t much I could do. So I would read, color and play with paper dolls. Paper dolls became a big thing with me because I could switch them out, change their clothes. I never had pretty clothes as a child. I never had pretty shoes, because I couldn’t wear them. I was always in a big, bulky brace or a big cast.

My mom would make pajamas for me that fit over the big cast. And she would make little booties to put on my feet, fashioned out of washcloths. Many years ago, people made booties by putting elastic on top of washcloths and fitting them around your ankles. She didn’t want my feet getting cold. So that’s what I wore for months, my pajamas and washcloth booties over that big old cast.

Bless my mom’s heart: Visiting days were only two days a week. It was Wednesday afternoon and Sunday afternoon. That’s the only time I saw my mom. But my mom talked about being tough. I think I get a lot of my toughness from her, and our stories are similar somewhat but just in a different way. She was the toughest lady I’ve ever known, really. She would work two jobs to try to take care of three children and still travel an hour to the hospital to see me on those two afternoons a week. So I knew I was loved; I’ve never doubted that. I knew I was loved, knew I hadn’t been abandoned. I knew she was doing what she thought was best for me, and it was.

After I had been in the body cast for a while, they performed my first spinal fusion. My scoliosis was so severe. If you could see my X-Ray today you would wonder how I can even stand up, because it’s like an “S.” My doctor was just mortified the first time he ever saw it. He had to X-Ray my lungs. He looked at that and he came back into the room and he said, “My gosh, Carol. You’ve never told me about this.”

They did the spinal fusion and I stayed in the body cast for a few more months. And then they decided I was ready for the cast to come off. And I thought, “Oh boy, I’m free.” But as scary as it was for them to put the cast on me, it was far more terrifying when they had to take it off. They took me back down to that casting room in the basement, and a man had a power saw to cut it. He began down at my knees and started sawing that thing off me, and I could feel the heat from it. It almost burned me. And the closer he got up to my neck, the more I thought he was going to cut my head off. I really thought he was going to cut me with that power saw. That was the scariest thing I think I ever went through during that time.

They put a smaller cast on me after that, one that went to my waist instead of my knees but that was still up to and around my head. This time I was able to sit in a wheelchair. I couldn’t walk, but I could maneuver around the ward in that wheelchair. I was in a ward with 12 other little girls, six on one side and six on the other. I was confined to one of these huge, white, metal baby beds with sides that went up and down. Those were what polio patients had to be in.

I was really liking being in the wheelchair. Some of the other little girls could be in a wheelchair also because of their legs. But I wasn’t able to push my wheelchair with my arms, so the nurses would push me around to different places. I would ask them if they would just push me to the other little girls’ bedsides. I would go from bed to bed, and we would play. We would play with paper dolls. We would color, and I would read to them. Sometimes some of them really couldn’t feed themselves, so I would sit there and have my lunch with them and feed them. It was just a big family. It was the only real family that I knew, since my siblings were not allowed to visit.

At age 12 I was told I would need another spinal fusion. After this surgery, I was going to be done with the body casts for good. But I was put in these big, bulky body braces that went around my head to my hips. It was called a Milwaukee Brace. The basement was also where you’d be fitted for your braces. Steve Mullins was the one who handled all of the braces. I was fitted for my brace and it felt tight. There were two big metal bars going up and down the front of my body and two of them on my back side. I couldn’t wear clothes. I never felt pretty because I always had to wear these braces.

During both of my surgeries, my mother would sit at the hospital all alone. She would never hear from my dad. He would never come to sit with her, and she would sit right there in that lobby not knowing if I was even going to live through the surgery. She would sometimes have cousins come sit with her, and occasionally a pastor. But most of the time, she would be right there by herself.

My dad was just never a part of my life. He was gone. But I never asked why. I never asked my mom, “Well, where’s my dad? Why doesn’t he give you money? Why doesn’t he help us? Why doesn’t he come to see me?” I never said any of that, never had any ill feelings towards him, never hated him, never resented him. I’m not sure why. I guess it was because I didn’t know any different than life without a father, because he left when I was so young.

Those bulky braces were no fun, but I was OK with it. Because I could see ahead. I wasn’t dwelling on what I was going through. I was more focused on what I was going to do down the road. In my mind, I was going to get well. I was going to be well and I was going to be able to do all the things a normal person would do.

As the years went by, I would be switched into more braces. And at one point I was able to go home for a little while. And while I was at home I wasn’t able to go to school. So the county sent a teacher out to my home and she would teach me there. When I was in the hospital and in the wheelchair they had classrooms that I was able to go to. At one point The Birmingham News came there to do an article on hospital schooling, and they took a picture of me as I was looking closely at a globe. That was when I was in fifth grade.

After more than a decade, after two surgeries and all that treatment, I walked out of the hospital for the last time. I spent a couple of years being home-schooled. During those times the doctors would try to tell me to think about something else. They told my mom to get me a piano, to let me practice and keep my hands and arms moving. So she did that and I began playing piano. They didn’t think I would ever be able to use my arms that much. It settled in my right arm and hand the worst. So I would have to take my left hand and hold my right hand, and lift it up to the chalkboard, and try to write with my left hand leading my right hand. I didn’t have the muscle to raise my right arm up by itself.

So that was my childhood. I didn’t know anything else. As time went by, I was able to get out of that last brace. I was finally able to go to a public school. And I was dreaming of this all the time when I was in that bed, in that wheelchair, in those casts and in those braces.

I spent a lot of time dreaming. I would visualize: “One of these days I’m going to be beautiful. I’m going to have clothes. I’m going to have shoes and all of these things a kid dreams of.” But most of all, I dreamed that one day I was going to have a family. I was going to have a home. I wanted a little white house; I had always pictured that. I wanted to have a lot of boys, and I wanted them to play sports. I dreamed all of these things.

I always loved sports when I was a child. I watched sports on TV. And then when I was able to be up, I would watch other children outside playing. I never could go outside and play. I had to stay inside all of my childhood. I wanted to go out and play so bad, but I couldn’t do that. I think that’s why today I love being outdoors so much.

And football – my goodness, it takes my breath away to think about how important football has been to me. The Crippled Children’s Hospital was actually built by the Monday Morning Quarterback Club of Birmingham. The club was started in 1939, and initially the purpose was fellowship among lovers of football. But at some point thereafter the club began looking beyond football, and at that time polio was a terrible problem in the country. The club sponsored an annual high-school football game to raise money, and with the help of others they raised more than $3 million to build the Crippled Children’s Hospital. So football built my home, which was my hospital. I call it my hospital because that’s where I grew up.

At that time I had no idea how important football was going to be to my life. Going back to the days of being in that body cast, there’d always be visitors coming and seeing the children – movie stars, church groups, Sunday-school classes, football teams. And so many times over the years when Dabo would tell me he was going to take his team to children’s hospitals, I would never say anything to him. But I would think to myself: “Oh, my gosh. How many times? How many times did I have visitors like that come to the Crippled Children’s Hospital when I was there?”

To have football be such an instrumental part of your son’s life, sometimes it’s just overwhelming to think about that connection. You just have to know God had his hands in it many, many years ago. And I always go back to Jeremiah: God has a plan. He absolutely had a plan for me, and for Dabo.

I would just be fascinated about those visits from the football teams. The players would get their pictures made with you, and they’d give you autographs. At one point a visitor from a church brought me a mustard seed bracelet and explained the meaning to me. The message is that nothing is impossible if you have faith, even faith as tiny as a mustard seed. I wore that bracelet all the time, and it helped me so much. Nowadays, I have a mustard seed necklace and a mustard seed pin that I wear on my clothing.

There was a time when a church group came to visit the hospital and somebody brought me two stuffed animals. That’s all I really had for the longest time was those two stuffed animals. And guess what those two stuffed animals were? An elephant and a tiger. I kept them until all the stuffing started to come out. I had no idea what they were going to mean to me down the road; to me it was just a tiger and an elephant. But I look back on that now and I think: “Gosh. I was in a hospital that football built. I had these tiger and elephant stuffed animals. And then I have this son who’s doing all these wonderful things because of football, and he’s been with the Crimson Tide and Tigers.” It’s amazing. It is just amazing.

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