Annual Boating & Beach Bash puts focus on fun, not on disabilities
Fara Hoffman, 35, of Boca Raton is pushed down the boat ramp by her mother, Randy, and father, Jeff Hoffman, as they prepare to embark on a free boat ride on the Intracoastal Waterway during the Boating & Beach Bash last month in Boca Raton. Photos by Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
By Ron Hayes
There were lots of wheelchairs and canes in the park that Saturday. Prosthetic limbs, leg braces, even a one-armed pianist.
But you would have had a hard time finding any self-pity.
For five hours on March 15, Spanish River Park was packed with guests, family, friends and caregivers attending the annual “Boating & Beach Bash For People With Disabilities,” which prides itself on being the nation’s largest free event for people with disabilities, seen and unseen.
“We’ve had about a thousand guests sign up,” said Lori Weber, the event’s managing director.
There is no parking fee, no tickets needed. All are welcome, and by mid-morning, the pathways from the Intracoastal Waterway boat dock to the ocean beach were filled with participants, and still more kept arriving.
“Only about a third who show up actually register,” added communications director Amanda Larson.
Emily Edsken, 29, of Boca Raton embraces a volunteer dressed in a gown donated by the Wick Theatre for the event.
The Pledge of Allegiance would be recited, of course, and a soulful national anthem sung by Ry Rivers, but first Carter Viss entertained at the electric keyboard, with his left hand.
“My mom was a piano teacher, so I started playing as a hobby,” the Jupiter resident said. “And then I lost my right arm in a boating accident on Thanksgiving Day 2019.
“I was snorkeling and a boat ran over me off The Breakers. I was 25.”
He’s 30 now, a graduate student in marine biology at Florida Atlantic University. He and his wife, Emily, are the parents of Harper, a 7-month-old daughter.
“After the accident, I thought I’d never play again,” Viss recalled. “I wanted to give up. It took a few months, and then years to feel comfortable playing again.”
Now he’s comfortable with Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata and Chopin’s Ocean Etude.
“I’ve learned I can make a bigger difference because of my accident,” he said. “I can drive, bike, run, swim. I won 90% just by being alive.”
People with stories to tell
And still the crowd around Viss was growing.
So many people, and so much for them to do.
On the beach, lifeguards were waiting to help guests into wheelchairs with tires large enough to maneuver through sand. Then down plastic mats to enjoy the choppy waves that so many beachgoers visit without a second thought.
“This is my first time here,” said Peggy Domitz, 65, of Palm Beach Gardens, smiling in her wheelchair. “Now I wonder, is this hard because I’m old, or because of my disability?”
Paralyzed during surgery 14 years ago, she is both friendly and defiant.
“They’re just legs,” she said. “I’d rather be paralyzed than have cancer, and I’m a firm believer that this chair doesn’t confine me. I’m an adaptive scuba diver, meaning I dive with people trained to be buddies. I’ve scuba dived in Mexico, Grenada, Honduras.”
She has a favorite saying. “The only time people should look down on another person is when they’re giving a hand to get up.”
David Prater of Sunrise lost his left leg 10 years ago in a car accident.
David Prater makes it back to shore after his first time on a surfboard, with the coaching of Joey Rafe, owner of Rafe & Co Swim and Surf Club in Lantana.
“I still skateboard,” he said. “I still ride motorcycles.”
At the Bash he decided to ride a surfboard for the first time. With help from a lifeguard volunteer, he and his prosthetic leg made it onto the board, slipped off, remounted, and stayed on long enough to ride in to shore on his belly.
“It was awesome,” he said back on land. “I love Mother Ocean. I was always a wild and crazy guy, so I’m just going to live my life.”
Prater owns a small pool cleaning service back in Sunrise.
“It’s called One Leg Up Pool Service,” he grinned. “And the logo is a prosthetic leg.”
Donors, sponsors, helpers
Organizers estimate the annual Bash costs between $35,000 and $40,000 to put on, raised entirely from private donations and sponsorships. The work is done by about 250 volunteers.
The Rotary Club of Downtown Boca Raton provides free hotdogs and hamburgers. The city’s Junior League is there to help.
The 20 boats offering free rides were made available through the generosity of several independent boat owners who made their vessels available so guests could enjoy sometime on the Intracoastal Waterway. Members of the nonprofit Community Service League moved among the guests in Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Batgirl costumes provided by the Wick Theatre. Mark Hansen of Coldwell Banker Realty scurried throughout the park, greeting guests and visitors.
’So many memories’
You had to wonder what Jay Van Vechten would think of this elaborate event, born of a slippery bathroom floor 24 years ago.
Van Vechten, a public relations executive, was in a San Diego hotel on business one night in 2001 when he slipped on the wet floor in the dark. Falling backward over the tub, he shattered five vertebrae. Then he fell forward and broke both knees. His splayed legs required two hip replacements.
The Boating & Beach Bash debuted in 2009, he and his wife, Lowell, founded the American Disabilities Foundation, which oversees it, in 2012, and except when COVID prohibited a full-scale event, it’s filled Spanish River Park each spring.
Since Jay’s death at 75 in 2020, Lowell Van Vechten has committed herself to perpetuating their annual day of joy.
At this year’s Bash, she patrolled the event from ocean to waterway in a golf cart, chatting, greeting, making sure all was running smoothly.
“After 16 years, I have so many memories,” she said. “So many magical moments. Every year when I’m onstage for the opening, I cry. Always when they start ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ The hardest thing for me to get through is remembering all the people on our founding committee who have passed, starting with my husband.”
Van Vechten served on Boca Raton’s board for people with disabilities until it disbanded, and when his vision for the city’s annual picnic for those with disabilities grew bigger than the city could handle, he and Lowell took over.
Boat rides are a hit
Bailey Negron, 27, of Miami was making her second visit after several years away.
“It’s bigger now,” she observed.
Negron was in the backseat of a car that hit a wall on the Palmetto Parkway when she was 19. She can walk, but the lingering effects of the accident are visible.
“My legs hyperextend backward, as if my knees bend backward,” she explained. “I walk very well, but it took a lot of falls and practicing.”
She paused.
“I didn’t get on a boat my first time here,” she said. “Hopefully I’ll make my way to the boat.”
If she did, there was a wait. Of all the things to do that day, the free boat rides were clearly the most popular.
Boca Raton Fire Rescue deploys a water cannon to keep things cool at the Boating & Beach Bash.
Down at the dock, guests and caregivers in bright orange life jackets waited in two lines, one for the ambulatory, a second for those in wheelchairs.
Jeff and Randy Hoffman of Boca Raton waited to accompany their daughter, Fara, who is 35 and has cerebral palsy.
“We’ve been here 10 fantastic times,” Jeff Hoffman said as the line inched toward the dock. “We wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Eventually, the Hoffmans were led to the Minnow, a 20-foot pontoon boat owned by Al Zucaro. They disappeared up the Intracoastal and returned about a half-hour later.
“It was amazing,” Jeff reported. “We can tell she loved the wind out there because she communicates through her body language.
“She smiles.”
Comments