Disabled senior goes fore-ward

Overcoming many challenges, thanks to some friends at golf club

By: Bill Greenwood
   Life hasn’t been easy lately for 81-year-old Louie Barcalow.
   Within the last month, Mr. Barcalow, who lost the use of his legs in 1998, has had to deal with the loss of his wife, a nasty virus he picked up while golfing, and shingles, a viral infection that has caused him to have difficulty sleeping. But he was able to overcome all of these obstacles, he says, with some help from his friends at the Cranbury Golf Club in West Windsor.
   "I’m sure they all know how grateful I am to them," says Mr. Barcalow, a resident of Edison. "They’re just great. They’re just great people."
   Mr. Barcalow, who first golfed at the club in 1975, says he comes there every day for a round of golf and another of chit-chat with staff members, who call him the "grandfather" of the course. The title seems fitting, and Mr. Barcalow, in turn, considers the staff his family.
   "It’s all family," he says. "All my friends are here. I don’t hardly know my next-door neighbor at home because I leave the house at about 5:30 a.m. and maybe I’ll get home around noon or a little later. What can you do? I cut the grass and go into the house, have something to eat and watch TV. That’s it."
   His frequent visits to the golf club have done wonders for Mr. Barcalow, who feared he would become inactive after he was disabled by diabetic neuropathy, a disease that attacked his leg muscles. He says golfing has kept him healthy over the years, much more so than his original routine.
   "Being disabled, it’s like, what can you do?" he says. "Stay home on the computer, which I got rid of just for that reason? That’s too much inactivity. All I did was play Solitaire on it."
   Mr. Barcalow doesn’t just play golf to stay active — he loves the sport and has been playing it all his life. He says he started playing when he was 16 and continued off and on until 1989, when he began to play more often after retiring.
   "Golf is very addictive," he says. "It’s quite a challenging game. There’s 14 different clubs and probably 14 different ways you can hit every one of them, but it’s a lot of fun."
   Mr. Barcalow is no slouch in the skills department, either. He has hit four holes-in-one in his life and was able to score as low as 67, or four under par, at the golf club before he was forced to use a wheelchair. Since then, his lowest score has been a 76, and he usually scores between a 78 and an 85.
   "I can still shoot my age once in a while," Mr. Barcalow says.
   Not content to be simply a golfer, Mr. Barcalow assembles all of his own clubs, a practice he began around 15 years ago. He says he used to sell his clubs to friends but never made any money off it because he charged only what he put in.
   "That gives me a little something to do on the side," he says. "I’ve made a lot of clubs for a lot of people here."
   He has been able to continue golfing thanks to a mobile cart called the Golf Express that he began using after being forced to use a wheelchair. The device, which the golf club allows Mr. Barcalow to store on site, is able to swivel 360 degrees.
   "I can pretty much get into any position to hit the ball," he says. "I ride right on the greens and everything with it. It doesn’t leave a mark at all."
   It took him some time to get used to the cart, he says, and his game suffered at first. But with the help of club staff members who took pictures and videos that allowed him to see what he was doing wrong, he was able to get back into the swing of things. Now he considers using the cart "second nature."
   "It was a struggle," he says. "It took me almost three years before I could hit the ball halfway decent, but I kept plugging at it and plugging at it."
   The use of a swiveling golf cart isn’t the only thing that comes second nature to Mr. Barcalow these days. For him, the Cranbury Golf Club is an integral part of his life, a second home, that he plans to keep visiting until the bitter end.
   "They’re going to have to carry me off of one of the holes one day," he says. "They might bury me in a sand trap."