WHEELCHAIR BOWLING: Get the balls rolling

[antiquity]

WHEELCHAIR BOWLING: Get the balls rolling
Veterans have several ways to compensate for lost limbs

BY STEVE CLARK
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER Mar 30, 2002



George Jones rolled a ball down a ramp yesterday, as Ray Thompson watched.
(Bob Brown)
T.J. Bryan loved to bowl when he could walk.

Ten years ago, after a car wreck left him paralyzed from the waist down, he took up wheelchair bowling.

"I didn't know you could bowl in a wheelchair until somebody showed me," Bryan said.

Nowadays, the 48-year-old Hampton resident usually bowls once a week. His style is graceful. He positions his wheelchair - brakes on - at the foul line. He swings his strong right arm back and uses the classic underhanded style of upright bowlers to roll the ball toward the pins.

"My scores aren't as high as they were when I had use of my legs," Bryan said. "But I'm still bowling. It's still a lot of fun."

Bryan was one of 15 wheelchair-bound military veterans with spinal cord injuries who competed in a bowling tournament yesterday at AMF Hanover Lanes in Mechanicsville.

The vets represented U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals in Richmond and Hampton. Some live in the hospitals, while others live at home but receive outpatient treatments at the hospitals.

A few, such as Bryan, are able to bowl with their arms.

Most, however, are "ramp bowlers," as they are known. A ramp bowler lacks the arm strength to bowl underhanded, so a piece of equipment made either of wood or aluminum and called a ramp is attached to his wheelchair.

A ramp bowler pushes the ball from a tray down the ramp and onto the lane. On the first roll of a frame, the ramp is placed in the center of the foul line so as to aim the ball down the center of the lane. If that roll fails to knock down all the pins, the ramp can be moved to the left or the right to allow the bowler to aim the ball toward the standing pins.

The tournament's highest score was recorded by Richmonder Richard Carey, who used an aluminum ramp to bowl a three-game total of 384.

One ramp bowler was new to the game.

"This is my second time and I love it," said Richmonder Jerome Conway. "I hope to get better and better."

Conway, a former Marine wearing a black patch over one eye, had a small U.S. flag flying from his wheelchair. A bumper sticker on the back of the chair read, "SEMPER FI."

And then there was Earl Thornton, a quadriplegic from Hampton. Unable to move his arms, Thornton wears a headpiece with a metal rod. When the ball is set on the tray in front of him, he uses his head to guide the rod into the ball's thumb hole. Then, with a nod of his head, sends the ball rolling down the ramp and onto the lane.

"Earl is amazing," said Charlie Hayden.

"When I watch him bowl with his head, I thank God for what I have. It just goes to show you, where there's a will there's a way."

Hayden, who lives in Goochland County, is sports director of the Virginia Mid-Atlantic Chapter of Paralyzed Veterans of America. The chapter organizes tournaments for wheelchair bowlers and other recreational activities for paralyzed veterans.

Hayden, a former wheelchair basketball player who took up wheelchair bowling a few years ago, lost his legs in combat in Vietnam in 1966.

"Shrapnel from a bomb," he said. "But I was fortunate. The same bomb that wounded me put three other guys in a black plastic bag. I have no complaints."

Also on hand yesterday were members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 9808 in Mechanicsville. Their job was to socialize with the wheelchair veterans and to retrieve their bowling balls from the return racks.