Chair Sends Disabled People to the Beach

A specially designed wheelchair that maneuvers like a dune buggy on sand is making beaches accessible to people who use wheelchairs.

The “Surf Chair,” invented by a Daytona Beach, Fla., lifeguard, looks like a patio chair with oversized wheels. It moves easily over sand that would bog down a regular wheelchair.

The Chicago Park District has installed two of the chairs at each of its seven beaches as part of its “Access to Parks” program.

“This has made the whole lakefront accessible,” said Rob O’Connor, the district’s supervisor of beaches and pools.

Inventor Mike Hensler, a self-described “piddler” who also designed lifeguard towers and rescue sleds for Daytona Beach, said he built his first chair last year at the request of a disabled group.

Since then, he says he has built 70 chairs for beaches in Illinois, California, New Jersey, Delaware, South Carolina, Florida and Ohio in his garage.

“We’ve gotten people coming down on the beach who haven’t been there in 17 years,” said Hensler, 42. “It’s just a real pump to have them come and enjoy the beach.”

The base of the 35-pound chair, which must be pushed, is built from the same kind of plastic pipe used in plumbing.

It has a green vinyl seat, back rest and foot rest, and four bright orange tires resembling small inner tubes that can be locked when the chair is at rest. An umbrella and a backpack are available as attachments.

“It’s a beachy-looking chair,” Hensler said. “It doesn’t look out of place there.”

Hensler generated interest for the chair in October when he took one to the U.S. Lifesaving Assn. convention in Baltimore.

“My first thought was, ‘What is that thing?’ ” said Rick Gould, aquatic supervisor for Santa Cruz, Calif., the only California beach using the chairs. “Once I saw it, I grabbed as much literature on it as I could.”

Sammy Jaramillo, 75, of San Jose, Calif., who was paralyzed on his right side by a stroke, used one of the chairs at Santa Cruz for the first time recently.

“It is really fantastic for handicapped people,” said his wife, Ida, 39. “Now that I’ve found a way, I can take him with me all the time.”

Chicago is among the few municipalities that have bought the $800 chairs. In most cases, as in Santa Cruz, municipal beaches work with local charities to raise the money.

The Americans with Disabilities Act does not require beaches to provide access for the disabled.

“The problem is one of cost,” said Bill Richardson of Huntington Beach, Calif., president of the U.S. Lifesaving Assn. “Lifeguards are scrambling for bucks to do their jobs.”

O’Connor said the cost has been worth it in Chicago.

“We’re finding in a lot of cases where there isn’t that much more of an effort, we can make the beach a much friendlier place for those with one kind of challenge or another,” he said.