He's Making The Most Of A Tough Situation

Life dealt Lake Placid resident Bill O'Brien a tough hand when he contracted polio as a 3-month-old baby, but throughout his struggles with the disease he's made the most of it.

At age 60, O'Brien retired after working nearly 34 years with the Sebring Police Department as a dispatcher until 2006. That was when the Highlands County Sheriff's Office took over dispatch.

"My nickname there was always O'B," he said.

In his retirement he has continued his fight with polio, because of a little-known condition called Post-Polio Syndrome.

"That's when it comes back and affects the muscles it didn't get the first time," said O'Brien, as he sat confined to his power wheelchair behind the welcome center counter where he volunteers at Florida Hospital Lake Placid.

Post-polio was only recognized by the government about five years ago, according to Cyndi O'Brien.

He and his wife need a motorized Hoyer lift in their home because O'Brien has fallen trying to get from his chair into bed. He faces a serious alternative, life in a nursing home and loss of independence.

Polio's Progression

Until a few years ago he used a scooter chair and could get around with crutches and leg braces, he said.

"I blew out the rotator cuffs in both shoulders," he said, adding that the doctors have told him surgery is not an option.

He can't push himself up any longer and at 250 pounds he's difficult for his wife to lift. She's had back trouble as a result.

"About the only time I get out of the chair is to get into bed or go to the bathroom," he said.

One of his friends, Bob Street, 70, a member of his church, the First Assembly of God, said the last times O'Brien fell, it took four people with Highlands County Emergency Medical Services to pick him up with a sheet.

"They need a Hoyer lift with an electric motor," he said. "It costs about $6,000."

Love Those Volunteers

"He's a keeper," said Supervisor of Patient Financial Services Becky Phillips on Wednesday afternoon. "Even though he's in a wheelchair he does all the functions the volunteers do. He takes patients to radiology and downstairs to surgery. He takes flowers to patients on the floors."

He also helps pre-register patients, gives visitors and patients directions, delivers paperwork for tests, whatever it takes, she said.

"He meets, he greets, he's at the central hub," said Kathy Albritton, marketing director at Florida Hospital. "So, when someone walks into Florida Hospital, his is the first face they see."

"He's wonderful for us," said Carole Seifert, director of volunteer services for the Sebring, Lake Placid and Wauchula, Florida Hospital branches. "He fills in when other people get sick."

Treasures In Heaven

O'Brien has volunteered countless hours of his life. During his summer vacations from the PD, he spent three to four weeks as a counselor at Camp Wimauma.

"We ran a store where we sold T-shirts, souvenirs and food; what you'd call a canteen," he said. "It was a blessing to them and it was a blessing to me. Due to my down-hill health, I haven't been able to go the last couple of years."

He was a member of the Sebring Jaycees and is a past president of H.A.L.L.O., Handicapped Americans Love of Life Organization.

He registered people for income eligibility and other criteria at the Living Waters Church of God's former Food Pantry until it closed.

He stayed at the dispatch desk at Sebring Police Headquarters during the 2004 hurricanes, fielding emergency calls.

He went with church members and delivered food to Wauchula during the 2004 hurricanes.

"We'd cook up hot meals for them," he said. "We got those big tubs they use for oranges and filled them up with ice, water and milk for the kids."

He's a member of Promise Keepers.

Bill And Cyndi Meet

According to Cyndi O'Brien, she met Bill at church.

"The week we met he had fallen and hurt his ankle," she said. "He was out of work for about four months.

"One of the officers at the police department had a problem," she said. "I think it was a child, someone in the family was sick, and they were having a hard time with medical bills. They were having (financial) problems. Bill said, 'Go empty the freezer and take it to them.'"

There was a lot of frozen meat and vegetables in there, she said.

"It was what he had in stock for himself and his mother," she said.

It was a defining moment for her.

"It's his biggest goal in life to just fit in and be normal," she said. "I have a lot of admiration for him and a lot of love."

Bill O'Brien also recalled when they met.

"I didn't meet my wife until I was at least 40 years old," he said. "I started attending the Church on the Rock in Sebring. She was there as a teacher in charge of the youth."

He said she invited him to her home and made him lasagna.

"That did it," he said, patting his stomach. "The next thing you know ... Touch the stomach."

They met in March or April, dated around July and were married the same year on Dec. 29, 1990. When they got married they had a choice.

"He said after 40 years he felt it was time to move out," she said. "He wanted to be out on his own, but he still takes care of his mother."

He helps out a lot around the house. He does the dishes and some laundry and waters the plants outside, she said.

A Good Son

Since he started working, O'Brien helped support his mother and father.

His father got sick with emphysema and heart trouble while they lived in Aurora, Ill. That's were O'Brien said he was born. They moved to Florida in 1966.

"It was for my father's health," he said. "The choice was Florida or Arizona. The doctor gave him six months to live up north. He said if you move to Florida or Arizona you may live a little longer. He hung on quite a while."

His father passed away in 1980, but his mother is a resident at The Palms of Sebring.

He Used To Drive

Bill O'Brien said he was the first person licensed to drive using all hand controls in Florida.

"Then I started teaching others to do it," he said.

When it got cold, he stopped at Dunkin Donuts and picked up coffee and donuts and dropped it off for the homeless, Cyndi O'Brien said.

He had to give up driving a few years ago because of his deteriorating muscles.

Shriners Help

He was in and out of Shriners Hospitals until his early teens.

"I was a little kid when my momma carried me in," he said. "The doctor said I'd never walk. I came out of there about 18 months later - walking on braces and crutches."

Since then he underwent numerous surgeries.

A visitor brought Scarlet Fever into the hospital and he ended up with a heart murmur.

"Even at the Shriners Hospital, I always looked at it as, hey, there's always someone worse off than I am," he said. "My mom, aunt and uncle pretty much took care of me. My dad didn't want much to do with me. He'd do everything in the world with my brother and sister. I had to love him and forgive him. His main thing was he couldn't deal with it."

Making Friends

His friends were pretty much limited to his parents' friends and other handicapped kids.

"My brother and sister had regular friends," he recalled. "They were friends to me too, but ... They'd take me along with them, throwing snow balls and stuff. We could get into trouble real good. Thing that got me was they could all run off and I couldn't. I was always the one who got caught."

He attended the C.M. Bardwell School for Special Education for the Handicapped. For ninth and 10th grades he attended Simmons Junior High School.

He's a Blue Streak. He moved to Sebring for grades 11 and 12 and graduated from Sebring High School in 1968. During that time he said he managed the swim team under Coach Glen Odham.

He attended South Florida Community College for business and accounting. He took vocational rehabilitation through Goodwill Industries, to see what he could do.

"We decided on dispatch," he said.

Off To Work

He ran a Western Union office for one year in Sebring and worked the switchboard at Highlands General Hospital, he said.

In 1972 he went to work for the Sebring Police Department, hired by then outgoing Police Chief Lonnie Curl.

"Lonnie said he convinced the city council to take a chance on me," O'Brien said. "He was even in doubt if I was going to do any good. At my retirement party, he said I was the last one he hired and the best one he hired."

Curl has since died.

Dispatchers take a lot of strange and desperate calls. His saddest call was when a caller carried out his suicide threat. He heard the shotgun blast over the man's phone line.

"I learned in school if someone called, they wanted help," he said. "That one tore me up for a long time."

Sebring Police Cmdr. Steve Carr said he was not aware of O'Brien's problems, but said they would get a collection going.

Fun In The Sun

He enjoys playing with his terrier Hanna. That's his pride and joy and she's his companion when Cyndi is at work at First Baptist Church in Lake Placid, where she is head bookkeeper.

They have a son and daughter from her previous marriage, but he considers them and their three girls his family.

"This is his family," she said. "He would do anything in the world for those kids."

He likes to swim and enjoys the beach, he said.

He and his wife had one of those embarrassing moments when they last went to Daytona Beach.

"We were down there with two of our granddaughters," he said. "They wheeled me out in this big beach chair with big wheels on it, right into the water. The longer I sat there the deeper the wheels sank into the sand.

"That lifeguard had to pull me out with his truck.

"That's not the half of it though. When I got to the (power) chair, they couldn't get me out of the beach wheels to this chair. They had to call the Daytona Beach Police Department to lift me out of the beach wheels to this chair.

"My wife and I were never so embarrassed in our lives. There were people standing around us cheering the police - 'oh yea!'"

Anyone wishing to make a donation in Bill O'Brien's name is asked to go to any Wauchula State Bank branch and they'll take it from there.

For more information about Post-Polio Syndrome, contact the North Central Florida Post-Polio Support Group at 352-489-1731 or visit their Web site at http://www.postpoliosupport.com .