Jean and Bob Manfredi, for the 22nd year, spent a day showing how golf can be as therapeutic and restorative for persons with disabilities as it can be to, well, anyone who has, thinks he has, or wants to have, an ability to play golf.
At the annual First Swing golf seminar at the Twin Brook Golf Center Tuesday in Tinton Falls, in a field of some 60 or so trainers, occupational and recreational therapists, and others wearing prosthetics of one type or another, some for the first time, the only handicap was the golf term alluding to the numerical measure of a golfer’s potential playing ability on any course.
The Manfredis, third generation owners of the family business Manfredi Orthotic & Prosthetic Affiliates, LLC designs, manufactures prosthetics of all kinds, as well as fits and trains persons who need orthotic devices, annually join forces with Twin Brook and the Eastern Amputee Golf Association to assist in the rehabilitation of amputees and help provide for their physical and psychological welfare through golf. Couple the Manfredis’ expertise with their outgoing personalities, their obvious dedication to their work, Bob’s creativity in creating special orthotics and Jean’s innovative and colorful special designs on prosthesis and you have a combination that can’t be beat.
And that’s only half the story. The rest of the story is the stamina, endurance, perseverance and outlook on life those amputees who are willing to take up the challenge and take on a new sport for therapy and enjoyment.
Inspiration comes from all sides among the people who were participating this week in the program. There’s Christa Nordini, a physical therapist who travels from Monmouth to Atlantic counties assisting in orthotic therapy. She’s a golfer herself, and wanted to see some of the special equipment the Manfredis designed for persons with different types of prosthesis and to learn more about what kinds of equipment exist. Bob has designed special golf clubs for persons in wheelchairs, gloves for people who can’t hold a golf ball, and even devices to help pick up a ball. Christa loved the morning sessions of the seminar aimed at showing the proper use of modified regular equipment to therapists and is now eager to show her patients some new ways they can exercise and do therapy outside of a clinical situation.
There’s also Katrina Morales, another physical therapist at Bayshore Health Care Center in Holmdel. She’s been to the Manfredi seminar in the past and finds it so motivating and so good for her patients that she wanted to be back to ensure she knows of any updates. Morales said she finds the motivation golf offers to amputees to be one of the program’s best benefits. “Some amputees have a lot of difficulty accepting their new status and most think this is the end of their golf game. But then they try this and realize how good they feel and how good it is for them. These people never say never.”
But the real stories are from the amputees themselves. There isn’t one among the golfers on Tuesday who consider himself ‘handicapped.’ Nor are they ‘disabled.” They’re simply “abled in a different way.”
Keith Bleich, who came to the Manfredi seminar, had his left leg amputated below the knee after a freak accident that occurred when neuropathy, a deadening of nerve endings, allowed him to burn his foot on a South Carolina beach before feeling the serious damage it had caused which subsequently led to other infections…along with a year in the hospital, 17 surgeries, nine more surgeries on his eye after the infection impacted his vision. It all happened less than three years ago, and he can even smile when he tells you “I lost my leg and my eyesight 28 days apart.”
So why is Keith at the seminar? “That’s easy,” he chuckles, “I coach a women’s traveling softball team and I have to be able to keep my balance. The amputation changes my balance and golf helps me re-gain it.”
Bleich was a salesman and a motivational speaker before his surgeries, and it’s easy to see how he was successful in both jobs.
Then there’s Jim Lawroski. “Bob’s my prosthetics man,” he grins, explaining why he is at the seminar. Forget about the fact he lost his leg in a motorcycle accident eight years ago. The prosthesis makes it possible to get back on that Harley. In fact, Lawroski, who owns both a Harley Sportster and an Ultra Classic trike, spent two and a half months covering 12,200 miles across the USA on his bike last year, traveling from Toms River to Alaska. Retired as an assembly line worker for General Motors in Linden, Lawroski said he’s at the seminar trying something new today. Why not?” He primarily rides his Sportster, but when traveling with his friend Eileen Hartley, whom he met on line a year ago and found they only live three blocks apart, he drives the trike. “I don’t want her riding on the seat behind me,” he says gently, “I don’t want her to get hurt if anything happens.” Jim’s prosthesis sports a colorful Harley logo with all the trimmings, the talented work of Jean, who readily admits she’s eager to decorate any prosthesis with whatever its owner wants. And she’s done some mighty unusual decor on resin, fiberglass and carbon fibers that make up many of the prosthetics.
There’s Ken Hoffman, the good looking young guy who was crushed between two vehicles 15 years ago necessitating his leg be amputated. He spent a year in the hospital while physicians were trying, successfully, to save the other limb. Today, he’s a scuba diver and scuba instructor, owns his own business and trying golf to help with his balance and to continue to prove to himself that he’s not limited in any way. “Just different,” he grins.
And “Hollywood”! Officially, his name is Herbert Wilburn, who describes himself as a bi-lateral amputee, having lost both legs and both arms in a medical malpractice situation. “I went in for a prostate biopsy and something went wrong in the procedure and I lost all our limbs. The good news is the biopsy was negative!” And he shoots one of those big grins that ever y one of these golfers was showing all afternoon. He doesn’t talk about his 14 days on life support, the lifesaving techniques and outstanding care he received at Jersey Shore Medical Center and University Hospital in amputating his limbs, nor the fact he’s no longer an auto mechanic. What Hollywood talks about is “trying something new. I never played golf before; I thought it might be fun, so here I am.”
There are scores more Manfredi clients, all with a story of their own to tell….the Vietnam vet, the child, the diabetic, the women injured in a severe automobile accident, the old, the young, the angry and the frightened. They all turn up at Manfredi’s; they all try some of the innovations this couple strives so hard to introduce. And they all go away feeling better about themselves, their abilities, and their renewed confidence in who they are as a person.
– Story by Muriel J. Smith • Photos by Tina Colella
Editor’s note: The Eastern Amputee Golf Association (EAGA) is sponsored by the National Amputee Golf Association (NAGA) and the PGA.
