Back to Phil's Main Page
Phil Martin,
Macon, Georgia
For as long as Phil Martin, 47, can remember, he has always wanted to help people with disabilities. The other passion in his life is water sports – and he has been able to combine both to fulfill both his personal and career ambitions. He says he wants people to know that having MS does not mean being “uninvolved in life,” and that is a motto he lives by.
Before he was diagnosed with MS in 1995, Phil devoted his free time to adaptive water skiing. He designed water skis that could accommodate severely disabled people and founded the first adaptive water skiing program in the nation. He traveled all over the world with the U.S. Disabled Water Ski Team and even got to water ski on the French Riviera, an experience he describes as “too cool.”
Then along came MS in 1995, which weakened Phil’s legs and forced him to stop skiing. Rather than abandon his love of water sports altogether, he poured his energies into the less physically demanding sport of sailing and since 1999 has trained sailors for the Special Olympics. He was appointed as the Director of Sailing for the Special Olympics for the state of Georgia and served as the Chief Safety Officer for the 2003 Special Olympics Summer Games in Ireland.
Phil’s Betaseron® Champions of Courage grant helped him to purchase a 27-foot catamaran sailboat that can accommodate wheelchairs, enabling him to teach sailing to people with MS and special needs in his community. All lessons are given free of charge. The new boat, “Banana Wind,” named after a Jimmy Buffet album, is ideal for instructing people with disabilities because of its flat and steady design. He frequently sails with groups from the Georgia Academy for the Blind as well as people with spinal cord injuries, MS and developmental disabilities.
As Director of Adaptive Programs for the city of Macon, Phil organized a wide range of sports programs for people with physical and developmental disabilities. In 2003, Phil was named “Macon Citizen of the Year,” and his program for the city of Macon was chosen as the most outstanding adaptive recreation program in the state.
Because of Phil’s work with the disabled community, he never faced MS as devastating news. To him it was more of an irony than a shock. “I have worked with so many people whose disabilities are far worse than my own,” says Phil, who walks with a limp and has muscle stiffness and numbness in his lower body. “I saw it as an obstacle that would need to be overcome, but I knew that life would go on.”
- Updated
