The sun was shining, the balls were flying and the chairs were rolling yesterday at the Fanshawe Golf Course Parkside Nine.

It was the eighth annual Madame Lise Thibault Golf Tournament, a three-person-per-team golf scramble for people with disabilities.

The city donates the course -- the first in North America for people with disabilities -- for the day, Olizarevitch said.

The course is flat and the greens are built on firm soil to allow a wheelchair to drive over them, he said.

"There's no sand traps, no water, all on a 10-acre parcel of land."

Marine Joshua Hoffman was paralyzed by a sniper's bullet in Iraq in January 2007. At left is his mother, Reed City resident Hazel Hoffman, and fiancee, Heather Lovell pictured during a day out from a Virginia veterans hospital in 2007.

Heather Lovell knows how her fiance, injured veteran Josh Hoffman, feels about moving to a home that's to be built especially to meet his needs.

"He's so excited. He doesn't even have to say anything. You can see it in his face," Lovell said.

DOCTORS feared Michael Wakeman would never walk again after he crashed a billy-cart into a car.

The 13-year-old had completely dislocated his spine, compressing a disc and squashing the nerves supplying the muscles to his legs, bladder, bowel and genitals.

Michael was riding the old cart down a road in Mount Colah in Sydney's north six weeks ago when he hit a parked car and spun 180 degrees, slamming his back into the side of the car.

Accident damages Gainesville man's body but not his spirit

Normal for him used to be enjoying his retirement from AT&T with his wife, Lynn, ministering to kids at Hopewell Baptist Church, playing with his grandchildren and taking lunchtime jogs near his home off Tanners Mill Road.

All that changed on the afternoon of May 7 when a car driven by an alleged drunken driver plowed into him as he jogged along the side of the road, sending him flying. The impact cracked his ribs, collapsed a lung, tore ligaments in his knee and broke his back.

Andrew Commons is determined to walk again - utterly determined. As well as following an intensive daily exercise regime, he's also undergone courses of stem cell treatment for the spinal cord injury that has confined him to a wheelchair.

Just back from Beijing Tiantan Puhua Hospital, Commons says it's too early to tell whether several injections of stem cells into his spine have worked, but he's optimistic.

"I've now got a bit of movement in my left big toe, which is pretty good. They say if you can move your toes, you'll walk at some stage, so obviously I'm pretty hopeful about that - if the stem cells do have a benefit, with luck I'll be on my legs."

The new vehicle includes an automatic ramp that will provide quick and easy access for individuals who use wheelchairs, motorized scooters and other mobility devices.

It also changed the life of his brother, Brian. It set him on a mission to cycle across Canada.

Hard-driving Bay State disabled veterans brought home gold, silver and bronze medals after a week of fierce competion during the National Veterans Wheelchair Games in Omaha, Neb.

According to Kim Byers, spokeswoman for the event, 500 military-veterans-turned-athletes - including at least a dozen from Massachusetts - challenged themselves and each other in what has become the largest annual wheelchair sports event in the world.

“You feel like it’s a true Olympic event. Everybody is supporting you, and they want you to succeed,” said Rosemary Cahill, 53, of Yarmouthport.

Anderson will forever regret not strapping on a seat belt that day in Idaho. But at 21, she's found joy in life, good friends and even a chance of escaping her wheelchair.

Hope first came days after the crash, when she realized she could roll over. Three years later, after intensive daily therapy, Anderson's right leg moved.

Matt Hampson might well have been in Auckland this summer, playing for the England rugby team as they took on New Zealand. After all, many of his former team-mates were.

But Matt was instead at home in Rutland, confined to a wheelchair, paralysed from the neck down, unable to move any part of his body save for his head, his breathing dependent on a ventilator.

The horrific accident that transformed Matt's life happened nearly three years ago when, while training with his international colleagues in Northampton, the scrum collapsed and the former prop forward, who played for the Leicester Tigers and the England Under 21 side, suffered a dislocated neck and a trapped spinal cord.

According to Patricia Valenza, a physical therapist at Sunnyview, pressure mapping is a thin mat, measuring approximately 18 by 18 inches that has 256 sensors for sensing pressure at different parts of the sitting surface.

“When a patient sits on the mat, the sensors read pressure at individual locations on the thighs and buttocks,” said Valenza. “This data is transferred to a computer, where we can analyze it and determine where pressure sores may occur.”

It was July 25, 2007, the second day in the family's annual weeklong pilgrimage to Pismo, a trip they had been taking for nearly 20 years. Miller's wife, Leanne, stayed on the beach while Miller and his brother-in-law, Phil Morino of Modesto, took their boogie boards into the ocean. Two of the Millers' daughters, Natalie and Jacqueline, then 17 and 19, had been surfing for a few hours.

This week, those dreams will take her to the other side of the world where she will undergo a controversial stem cell transplant.

"I am doing this because the doctors told me I would never walk again and I don't believe that's true," said the 25-year-old Clinton woman. "I can't get stem cell injections here at all."

Three weeks after the auto accident, Joe Velasquez remained in his hospital bed in Pocatello, Idaho. His neck was broken, his spinal cord severely damaged, and he was connected to a respirator, unable to move.

It was no way to spend the Christmas season of 1983, not with a wife and two children at home.

One morning, Velasquez became aware of two doctors at the foot of his bed discussing his condition.

Gordy Luebker to realize his determination to full recovery from a spinal cord injury.

And one glance at the list of activities supporters and volunteers have lined up for an Aug. 2 benefit on Luebker's behalf says a lot about how others feel about him and his family.

"Every time I'm out, I have someone stopping me, asking, 'What can I do to help? What can I donate?' The response has been just phenomenal," said Kim Sweeney, a longtime family friend who has been instrumental in the fundraising event.

People with spinal cord injuries are getting help with their sex life through an innovative new programme.

The Auckland Spinal Rehabilitation Unit and the Association for Spinal Concerns have helped 400 patients learn new ways of expressing their sexuality.

It has won the Counties Manukau District Health Board a place in the finals of the 2008 New Zealand Health Innovation Awards.

Whatever anyone thinks of him or his situation, Josh Howard says, never call him a quitter.

Howard, 22, of Byhalia, Miss., has been paralyzed since crashing his sprint car at Little Rock’s I-30 Speedway on Oct. 25.

Though still considered a quadriplegic, Howard said he continues to see improvement through a daily regimen of physical therapy.

James suffered a spinal cord injury in a motocross crash in 2005 leaving him a paraplegic at the age of 16. Ricky did not let his injury stop him from doing what he loved most. Barely 6 months after his injury Ricky started designing adaptive components that would allow him to ride his dirt bike again.

Three years have passed since Tara Blackwell had her life altered in a split-second of tragedy. She has clung to hope. She has been fueled by hope. Now, for the first time since her paralyzing injury, Blackwell is ready to turn hope into a dramatic progression.

Blackwell, 23, a Pine Forest High graduate and former standout softball player at Troy University, is preparing to travel to Germany on Aug. 9 for the first phase of a stem-cell procedure that could enable her to regain movement.

When Jane Roskams started studying spinal-cord injuries, she kept coming across cells she couldn't identify. Other experts were often stumped, too.

"I quickly found out what a black box the spinal cord is," said the University of British Columbia (UBC) scientist. "People don't even know what half the cells are, let alone what they do."

Sheri Richmond, a Port Arthur resident who attended Lincoln High School with Everett's mother, Pat, held up a cell phone and snapped a shot.

"I hadn't seen him since right after he finished high school," said the 46-year-old Richmond, who introduced herself as his mother's old classmate. "I wanted to come here and see him for myself."

A chemical used by bacteria to invade other cells may boost the chance of successful rehabilitation from spinal and brain injury, research suggests.

A team from the Centre for Brain Repair in Cambridge treated rats with the enzyme chondroitinase.

They found the treatment increased the length of time that the nervous system was responsive to rehab.

Nathan, who turns 2 next month, was born with the hemispheres of his brain fused. He is physically and mentally handicapped.

DeVivo is among a growing number of Americans spending up to $75,000 in the hope that clinics in developing countries have realized the dream of regenerative medicine: using stem cells to fix the so-far unfixable.

Every mile that four paraplegic athletes taking part in the Wheel to Walk tour put behind them brings them that much closer to their destination of St. John's, N.L.

Every donation of 30 cents they receive along the way makes it that much more likely they'll be able to walk again.

Charlie Cetinski, Les McLaughlin, Chuck Mealing and Harvey Uppal are riding handcycles -- recumbent tricycles equipped with hand cranks -- across Canada to raise money for research into treatment for spinal cord injuries. By the time they finish their journey in September, they hope to have raised $10 million, or the equivalent of 30 cents from every Canadian.