Physical Therapist Mary Wilson Making a Wheel Difference

Physical Therapist Mary Wilson Making a Wheel Difference

By Leonard Shapiro

Not long after they finished their formal training, Del and Mary Wilson, the caring proprietors of Middleburg Physical Therapy, spent a year volunteering at a hospital in Romania back in the mid-1990s.

Mary Wilson, second from left, in Brazil with a recent wheelchair recipient.

That’s where Mary first got involved with helping provide wheelchairs for disabled patients. She filled out an application to acquire one from a charity, and also learned about another wheelchair organization called Wheels for the World.

She was intrigued about their work, and “once my year there with ‘Europa pentru Europa’ was done, I tucked it into the back of my mind for use once my children were grown.”

Wheels for the World is a Los Angeles-based, faith-based nonprofit that provides wheelchairs—all donated in the U.S.—to the disabled in developing nations who desperately need them. (Medicare and Medicaid provide Americans wheelchairs every five years as needed, but many countries don’t have that opportunity.)

After a conversation with her friend and fellow Bible study participant Amy Smith, Wheels for the World somehow came up, along with its inspirational founder, Joni Eareckson Tada. It turned out Amy and her husband, Dan, a Leesburg attorney, knew Tada and offered to introduce her to Mary.

That happened two years ago, in a somewhat serendipitous meeting. A Baltimore native, Tada had ridden horses in Middleburg as a youngster before being seriously injured in a diving accident that left her a quadriplegic at age 17. Her husband, Ken, also had a Wilson connection—his grandparents owned a cotton farm in Clovis, California, Del and Mary’s home town.

Mary enthusiastically volunteered to join up. Last October, she travelled to Brazil, spending ten days working to get patients seated into the proper wheelchairs, and doing some physical therapy, as well.

In Brazil, 250 people got wheelchairs, some brand new donated by manufacturers, but most used, though fully reconditioned. They’re restored by inmates at 15 federal, state, and private correctional facilities in 10 different states.

“A lot of them are lifers,” Mary said. “One of them said, ‘I’ve taken so much from people. This is my way to give it back.’”’

Recipients’ disabilities run the gamut—spinal cord,, cerebral palsy, Parkinson’s, amputations, among others. Each wheelchair must be customized based on an individual’s special needs. A 6-foot-3, 200-pound man needs a different chair than a 5-foot-3 130-pound woman, let alone a six-year-old child.

Since 1994, Wheels for the World has seated over 200,000 people in wheelchairs, and in 2022 will operate in 22 developing countries.

“We also train the people who get the chairs how to use them and how to take care of them,” Mary Wilson said, adding that she and her fellow volunteers also offer therapy and training so patients can do it on their own or with help from a friend or family member.

“In Brazil, one girl’s parents had never tried to do any range of motion work with her. She had cerebral palsy. We got her on the mat and trained the parents how to work with her.

“We had a quadriplegic who had been in the bed for two years. He was 6-feet and scared to death. We had to convince him to sit in the chair. In his old chair, he just slouched. We sent him home in an ideal chair for him, and it really does make a difference.”

Just like Mary Wilson and her dedicated colleagues at Wheels for the World.