Shortly after 10 a.m. a truck with a motorized wheelchair pulled up in front of his home in College Point. Daly, 52, a quadriplegic, was inside and his attendant, Beverly Miller, was pleading…
By Chris Fuchs
Monday morning was a somberly happy morning for James Daly.
Shortly after 10 a.m. a truck with a motorized wheelchair pulled up in front of his home in College Point. Daly, 52, a quadriplegic, was inside and his attendant, Beverly Miller, was pleading with him not to cry. For the most part, he held up.
Four days after being shoved from his $6,000 wheelchair, which was stolen near his home on 126th Street, Daly, a decorated war veteran who earned three Purple Hearts in Vietnam, received a new motorized wheelchair on loan from a national provider of hospital equipment. It took some time for Daly to acclimate himself to the speed controls, but he appeared cheerful despite his recent ordeal.
“You don’t know what it means to me to get back into the wheelchair,” Daly said. “I used to ride a Harley.” That was the name he gave the wheelchair that was stolen.
Last Thursday, as is his routine every day, Daly accompanied Miller, who lives in Far Rockaway, to the bus stop at 127th Street and 22nd Avenue. On his way back home, Daly, a former plumber for the Sanitation Department, stopped a block from his house to look at some street construction. Then sometime around 7:30 p.m., he felt as though he had hit a bump, his mother Mary said.
Daly had not hit a bump, however. He had been pushed from his wheelchair. He lay on the pavement until two men, driving past the bus stop, stopped when they saw him, his mother said. The men brought him back to his mother’s house, a few blocks away from where Daly lives, and called the police.
Sgt. Brian Burke, a police spokesman, said that in addition to the wheelchair, a bag that Daly was carrying with $14 in it was stolen. The police said Daly suffered abrasions to his head and lacerations to his knee, injuries that were still visible on Monday. As of Tuesday night, no arrests had been made, the police said.
While Daly waits to get a new wheelchair, possibly through Medicare, he will continue to use the one he received Friday, on loan from Apria Healthcare, a national provider of hospital equipment with a branch in College Point.
After being paralyzed in a car accident on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway in 1989, Daly has had to use motorized wheelchairs to sustain his independence. Otherwise, he needs to be pushed. Two years before his accident, Daly’s wife died of cancer.
The four days before the new wheelchair arrived had been especially troubling for Daly. Typically, Daly eats big breakfasts — ham and eggs on some mornings, pancakes on others, oatmeal on still others. But these past four days, Daly has eaten little, Miller said.
Miller, 47, has been with Daly for two years now, and has worked as a healthcare attendant for nearly two decades. She said that Daly, affectionately known in College Point as “Mister D,” has lots of friends and relatives, who help keep his spirits up. Together, Daly and Miller go shopping and sight-seeing, and when they are inside, they watch television or sometimes just talk.
“He’s like a child to me,” she said, even though Daly, a father of two sons in their 20s, has five years on Miller.
In the meantime, a special donation fund has been set up by St. John’s Lutheran Church, on 123rd Street, in College Point, said Tony Avella, a community activist in College Point who arranged for Apria to loan Daily the wheelchair.
Reach reporter Chris Fuchs by e-mail at Timesledgr@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 156.
