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‘Paco’s Gift’ became her
gift
By SANDRA KELLY
The name Sharon Moore Myers chose for her website says it
all.
Onaroll.org.
Sharon tackles the world with vigor despite a bout of polio
that left her a paraplegic at age 3. Starting in 1968, she
won more than 40 gold medals as a member of the U.S.
Wheelchair Paralympics and Pan-Am teams.
She competed in many parts of the world, including Israel,
Argentina, Peru and Holland. She holds Pan-American records
in freestyle and backstroke swimming, in shot put and
discus, and the credits go on.
Sharon and her husband Billy Myers, also a paraplegic and a
champion athlete, have worked to break down barriers for
people with disabilities. In 1973, she received an award
from the Virginia Parks and Recreation Society for removal
of architectural barriers in providing recreation for the
disabled.
The couple lives independently on their farm in the Roanoke
Valley where they cut brush, push snow as needed, and pursue
one of their three passions, gardening. Sports and travel
are the other two special interests.
And now, add writing as a fourth interest for Sharon. She
had never written a book before “Paco’s Gift” - “El Regalo
de Paco,” published in late 2006, and the reason she wrote
it is to further a project for disabled people in Cusco,
Peru.
Cusco is a center of old Incan culture, tradition and
architecture. It is in southern central Peru, 10 hours train
ride southeast from Lima. The city has 21 museums and is the
entrance to Machu Picchu, one of the world’s architectural
and archaeological monuments.
Sharon competed in the Pan-American Wheelchair Games in Peru
in 1973 and was so impressed by how the natives accepted her
and her wheelchair “Betsy” that she always wanted to go
back.
She has long been a travel writer for disabled people, and
in 1998 at a travel show in Miami, she met a Peruvian tour
operator who helped make her wish possible. Through Juan
Lopez, Prom Peru, Peru’s tourist board, invited a team of
the Society for Accessible Travel and Hospitality, which
included Sharon, to help make Peru more accessible to
tourists by identifying barriers to travelers with
disabilities.
Sharon was 51 when Juan and others helped her and her
wheelchair up more than 3,000 steps to the top of Machu
Picchu. During that trip, she met Paco, who became her
inspiration for the Cusco Courage, or Cusco Coraje, project
that now has 100 members. Among its activities is forming a
wheelchair basketball team.
Sharon wants to build Cusco Courage House where disabled
Peruvians can work during the day and enjoy sports
activities at night and on weekends. The structure will
enable her organization to qualify for food distribution
from the government.
The land has been donated for the project, and Sharon is
raising funds for it, as well as seeking donations for a
variety of sports equipment, wheelchairs and even vitamins
and calcium pills.
“Every time something I’ve needed has dropped in my lap,”
she says. “It’s going to happen.”
“Paco’s Gift” is in both English and Spanish and is
suggested as “a story for people of all ages” as noted on
its cover. The book is richly illustrated by Dell Siler of
the Roanoke Valley, a graduate of Radford University who has
a master’s degree in art and design and also must use a
wheelchair for mobility. Dell draws with a brush held
between his teeth.
The project manager for the book was Grace Kim Kanoy, a film
producer who lives in North Carolina. She helped her husband
Cary, who owns Core Expeditions, design a
disabled-accessible tour of the Galapagos Islands.
The book’s story inspires like the best of holiday essays in
the spirit of O. Henry’s “The Gift.” The reader travels with
Sharon into the Andean mountains and among people who find
inspiration from such a determined woman who must use a
wheelchair.
At least three people bought 20 copies each of her book for
Christmas gifts, Sharon said. The children of U.S. Chief
Justice Roberts were to receive a copy from one purchaser.
Inspired by the book, a woman in Meadows of Dan plans to
design clothes for people who use wheelchairs, Sharon noted.
Sharon sells the books, $19.95 each, through her website and
eventually will have DVDs of her trips to Peru and an audio
version of the book. She already has begun to work on a book
about Speck, the couple’s Border collie, and continues on an
autobiography.
Since producing a book was a new venture for Sharon, she
credits her fellow members in the Blue Ridge Pens writing
group for their support.
“I’ve been a sponge,” she says. “I’ve never done this. But I
want my project in Cusco. Those people need employment.”
Comments or questions? E-mail to comments@primeliving.net.
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