What kind of person would do this?

[Craig Smerda]

Kayaks lost, spirit remains
Wednesday, August 1, 2007 3:31 AM
By Ann Fisher

The scene was what you would expect on a balmy summer evening at a turn in a no-wake zone along O'Shaughnessy Reservoir.

A motorboat puttered by as a pair of fishermen anchored their pontoon boat. Beyond them, kayakers skimmed the surface of the water.

But the folks who gathered on shore at Adaptive Adventure Sports Coalition eyed each vessel with suspicion.

They are volunteers who help people with disabilities master sports that include kayaking each week along the Delaware County reservoir. And suspicion is not in their nature.

If you define civilization as that aspect of humanity prepared to lift up those who cannot lift themselves, David Holzer, Amanda Young, Rick Haller and the rest of the volunteers are part of its backbone.

They are not prone to ill will. But they have been tested.

Sometime on Friday or Saturday, someone breached their beach and snapped one of the cables that tether their fleet of 40 kayaks. Seven kayaks were stolen.

"My children are not allowed to say the word hate in our home," Holzer said, "but I hate thieves. I hate them."

He punctuated the sentence with a tug on the yard-long length of cable he had salvaged from the scene. The cuts were clean, Holzer noted, and if not the work of practiced thieves then at least of good planning.

And before the question was fully formed, he responded, yes, they're worried about getting hit again.

The thief (or thieves) took one Trinity Bay, two Wilderness, one Old Town and three Perception kayaks costing from $540 to $779 each. Most of the boats were new. The total loss was $4,494.

Maybe that doesn't seem like a lot of money, but this nonprofit, all-volunteer organization is a grass-roots operation, built one person, one sport at a time over a decade.

Holzer helps manage the kayak program, which has attracted more than 200 participants this season. They arrive in all shapes and sizes, with all sorts of disabilities and corresponding gear.

Seven kayaks make a big difference when folks have waited weeks for their turn.

And the group gladly shares the equipment -- the adapted bicycles and skis, the kayaks and more -- with local schools, organizations and individuals.

More important, they share their time, expertise and enthusiasm, something no one can steal.

That's how these folks are wired. They personify the five qualities that mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead described as the general definition of civilization: truth, beauty, adventure, art and peace. What would the civilized be, however, without contrast?

That's why Holzer was left to meet with deputy sheriffs yesterday and to contact those who will lose a turn next week because something evil this way came.

For more information about the Adaptive Adventure Sports Coalition and its water-skiing event this weekend, go to www.taasc.org.

http://www.dispatch.com/dispatch/conten ... 7G152.html

I'll be sending out my check in the mail tomorrow.

[dccjon]

I have worked with this group on different occasions and it is amazing what they do with paddlers with disabilities. Any support given will be greatly appreciated and well used by this group. I can't understand why anyone would steal, but especially if they knew what this group does!

Jon Slocum
American Canoe Assoc.
Ohio-Penn Division Instruction Facilitator