NEW GLOUCESTER — What goes around comes around.
Donald Ketcham volunteered when he was a teenager and now, 15 years after a serious accident, Maine Adaptive Sports & Recreation volunteers give back to Ketcham.
Ketcham was raised in a large family that loved being outdoors. He volunteered with the Student Conservation Corps, and made a name for himself in the world of blacksmithing. Ketcham demonstrated his blacksmith skills at the Common Ground Fair as a teenager.
“Donald is an all outdoors guy,” said his mother Ellen Ketcham, who home schooled Donald and his four brothers and sisters in Farmington.
Donald’s life changed 15 years ago but his passion for the outdoors did not. He was 19, working for the U.S. Forest Service in Idaho and mountain biking with a friend when he collided with a motorcycle.
Now 34 and with a brain injury, Ketcham still gets to bike and ski thanks to volunteers with Maine Adaptive (formerly Maine Handicapped Skiing). “The support of the volunteers is huge,” said Tobie Colgan, a recreational therapist for Goodwill NeuroRehab Services in Lewiston. Colgan and Ketcham Nordic ski every winter Thursday at Pineland Farms in New Gloucester and bike in Portland’s Back Bay during the summer. “It’s his desire to get outside and to be active. He loves the outdoors,” Colgan said.
Ketcham picked up skiing with Maine Adaptive a year after his accident. And while his short term memory loss keeps him from expressing his thoughts, Ellen Ketcham knows her son enjoys his time on the trails. “When he is skiing, I know he loves it,” she said.
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- From left, Ernie Forgione, of Gray, helps Donald Ketcham of Farmington, with the aid of Don Ware, of Norway, as they ski on the Nordic trails at Pineland Farms in New Gloucester last month. Tobie Colgan, a recreational therapist who works with Ketcham, is in the background.
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- From left, Tobie Colgan and Ernie Forgione help Donald Ketcham of Farmington, with the aid of Don Ware as they ski on the Nordic trails at Pineland Farms in New Gloucester last month. Colgan, Forgione and Ware are volunteers with Maine Adaptive Sports & Recreation.
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- Donald Ketcham, 34, of Farmington suffered a brain injury when he was mountain biking and collided with a motorcycle 15 years ago. He has been skiing and biking with Maine Adaptive Sports & Recreation ever since. We try to “get them to try it once, take the chance and try something new,” said recreational therapist Tobie Colgan about her clients she works with at Goodwill NeuroRehab Services in Lewiston.
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- Donald Ketcham of Farmington skis along the Nordic trials at Pineland Farms with the help of Don Ware, back left, Ernie Forgione, back right, Tobie Colgan, center, and Kristina Sabasteanski.
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