'He's conquered so much': Golf helps empower disabled man not expected to walk or talk

When Jeremy Gaia was a junior at West Geauga High School, he decided he wanted to try out for the golf team.

Gaia has been intellectually disabled since birth, suffers from chronic kidney disease, and constantly sees things moving due to a vision problem.

But the coach gave him a chance at his dream.

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After nine holes, Gaia was physically spent and unable to finish. But his first shot that day at Legend Lake Golf Club in Chardon showed the mental strength and competitiveness of the now-30-year-old who was not expected to walk or talk as a newborn.

“I got a message from the coach,” his mother, Paulette, recalled during a June 21 interview at Firestone Country Club. “‘We’re happy he tried out.’

"He hits his first shot with the heel of the club and the ball goes about 15 feet to the right. Jeremy tees up again and hits the ball 150 yards straight down the fairway. It didn’t bother him, he just tried it again.’”

Golf runs deep in the Gaia family. Jeremy’s father, Larry, had taught his two older children to play starting at age 5, the same age Larry’s father introduced him to the game. Larry stuck to tradition, handed Jeremy the cut-down clubs, and worked with him in the backyard and on the driving range for five years. At age 10, Jeremy began going to courses.

“He’s got vision issues; his eyes bounce around. The fact that he can actually golf is amazing,” Paulette said. “Larry said, ‘I’m just going to teach him and see if he takes to it,’ and he took to it. The other two no longer play. It’s a really good bonding thing — father, son on the golf course.

“There’s no distraction. You don’t have your phone; you don’t have your iPad or TV around. It’s just you and your father.”

A native of Chesterland, Jeremy had places where he was welcomed. Paulette’s two brothers worked full-time at golf courses — one at Grantwood in Solon, the other at St. Denis in Chardon — until they retired. Her late brother-in-law owned St. Denis.

Jeremy became an active participant in Empower Sports, one of the organizations supported by the Bridgestone Senior Players Championship, the PGA Tour Champions major tournament set for July 7-10 at Firestone Country Club.

Empower offers 45 team sports at sites around Northeast Ohio. Sessions are held one night a week for seven to 10 weeks and run 60 to 90 minutes. Empower brings in high school, corporate, and volunteer groups and intermixes the teams. Around 2018, it introduced golf, which Jeremy added to his schedule that already included basketball, softball, pickleball, lacrosse, soccer, CrossFit, and other fitness classes.

Tom Heines, executive director of Empower Sports, explained if Jeremy was participating in basketball at Solon Community Center, he might play with the Chagrin Falls girls team, the West Geauga boys, Hiram College, or a group of attorneys from Benesch in consecutive weeks.

Heines said the program helps the participants develop socially and emotionally and helps the volunteers embrace and interact with those with differences to “see them as human beings worth their time, dignity and friendship.”

Heines has known Jeremy for several years and said he’s a “special guy to me” because they both attended West Geauga High School.

Mentioning Jeremy’s competitive nature, which he also displays in Special Olympics events, Heines praised Jeremy’s golfing skills.

“He’s a pretty good golfer and I’m a terrible golfer. Jeremy should probably be coaching me, to be honest with you,” Heines said in a June 21 phone interview.

Paulette and Larry have always tried to treat Jeremy the same as their other two children —Jon, 10 years older, and Ashley, eight years older. All went on a canoe trip to Canada when Jeremy was 18 months old, as they had done with the first two, with a caveat from Jeremy’s nephrologist that they remain within eight hours of Toronto Children’s Hospital.

“You go into the wilderness. You pack all your belongings up in a canoe. You paddle around from island to island,” Paulette said. “We put him in the canoe, we put him in a car seat and we strapped it to the floor. Didn’t strap him in in case the canoe capsizes. There we are, the five of us.”

Jeremy also attended an individualized education program at Kent State University for four years.

“You know how hard it is for him to talk,” said Paulette, who worked full-time for BP for 20 years and part-time for another 10 after Jeremy was born. “When we were at his IAP meeting, Jeremy stood up and said clear as a bell, ‘I want to go to Kent State.’”

The Gaias said Empower became even more important to Jeremy during the pandemic, when he was forced to quit his jobs at a trampoline park and at a drugstore chain in March 2020 because kidney disease increased his COVID-19 morbidity risk. Prior to that, he’d also helped as an assistant athletic trainer at West Geauga High School, but the virus ended that role as well.

Larry Gaia doesn't know what Jeremy would have done without Empower and the contribution from the Bridgestone Senior Players Championship that kept it going. The global health crisis didn’t stop Jeremy from playing golf.

“Early in the pandemic at his Uncle Butch’s golf course in Solon, he won a putting contest,” Larry, 70, who works for B. Riley Financial, said proudly. “He sunk a putt from 30 feet. He was the only one to put it in the hole and the closest other one was about 6 feet.”

When it comes to golf, Jeremy likes riding in the cart, high-fiving with his dad after a great shot, and going to the snack bar. But Larry said Jeremy’s idea of a good round of golf “is finding more golf balls than he loses.”

“We were at the driving range last night and he wanted to stop and pull balls out of the creek,” Larry said, pointing out the ball retriever in Jeremy’s bag.

When Jeremy bought himself a new golf bag last year and they transferred the contents, Larry could barely pick it up.

“He had probably 50 pounds of golf balls that he found on the golf course,” Larry said.

His parents say Jeremy is extremely social, but it took a while for Jeremy to warm up during his interview at Firestone. But he proudly showed off a hat signed by Vijay Singh during the 2004 World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational, a Pebble Beach Golf Club flag signed by Fred Couples that his brother-in-law Chad got him a couple years ago, and two Masters T-shirts Chad bought him.

“Vijay was in a hurry. It was after his post-round range session and he was tired,” Larry remembered.

When Singh’s seemingly endless sessions on the driving range were mentioned, Paulette said, “Jeremy loves getting autographs and he will wait for hours. He’s the most patient person. He’ll talk when he wants an autograph.

“The tournament really excited him. He loved watching the pros play and he loved walking around the course.”

Larry and Jeremy watch golf on television every Saturday and Sunday and can’t wait to attend this year’s Bridgestone Senior Players. Just seeing him set foot onto the driving range at Firestone Tuesday sparked Paulette’s emotions.

“The doctors told us he was never going to walk or talk, and look at this. They didn’t know us and they didn’t know him,” she said. “The fact that he can golf and here he is at this course, this is like an absolute dream come true. He’s conquered so much.”

Marla Ridenour can be reached at mridenour@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/MRidenourABJ.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Ohio man not expected to walk or talk empowered by sports programs