Volunteer of the Week

Volunteer of the Week


If you think that a golfer needs to see what he’s doing, think again. Or ask Narberth resident Paris Sterrett. He’s been coaching blind golfers for 19 years, sharing the pleasures of the game he loves with those who need his help to get the ball into the hole – including a man who did just that with only one swing.riceabcmp4sales

From April through October, Sterrett drives a player to the course, aligns him, describes the holes, gives distances, suggests clubs and watches the ball’s progress. Seven years ago he was coaching an 89-year-old golfer from Wynnewood, Larry Ruttenberg. He told him that the hole was 137 yards away, over a ravine. Ruttenberg asked for his 7-wood and promptly hit a remarkable hole-in-one. The event made national news.

Sterrett, 68, coaches with the Middle Atlantic Blind Golf Association,access lighting which has been coaching the blind and visually impaired since 1948.mini electric car In addition to coaching individual golfers, he also volunteers as a starter and coach for MABGA junior blind programs at the Overbrook School for the Blind. The school has its own nine-hole course complete with a sand trap and a pond. It sponsors putting and closest-to-the-pin skill contests in which every child receives a prize and trophies are presented “There is nothing finer than to see the expression of a blind child when he or she is called forward to receive a trophy,” Sterrett says.

Sterrett grew up in Rhode Island and earned his master’s in rehabilitation counseling from SUNY Buffalo. He met his wife of 40 years, Joan, in graduate school. Sterrett worked with disabled veterans as a counseling psychologist at the Philadelphia VA for 25 years until he retired in 1995, a career he describes as “very rewarding.” The Sterretts have lived in Narberth since 1973.

Helping people and volunteering is something of a family tradition with Sterrett. His father was the executive director of a community center for children in Providence, and his mother was a very active volunteer with her church, the homeless, a senior citizens’ center and the local library. And Joan is an active volunteer with the Narberth Library, for which she was profiled in this column several weeks ago.

Sterrett plays golf early in the morning four times a week.rootabc He is a member of the Cobbs Creek Golf Course and describes his group of 10 colleagues jokingly as “ORFs (old retired farts).” He says that his biggest thrill in golf has not been his own three holes-in-one but providing CPR to a fellow player. At the hole farthest from the clubhouse, the player became disoriented and fell over his pull cart and, Sterrett says, “turned pink, blue and purple almost as fast as you could say birdie.” Sterrett immediately started CPR chest compressions and, after eight to 10 tiring minutes, the player’s color started to return and he revived. By the time the 911 crew arrived, he was sitting up. He spent 10 days at Lankenau Hospital, where he received a new pig valve and a bypass; now, three years later, he’s back playing with the ORFs. Sterrett says that the joke among his golfing friends now is that all of them want to play in his group, should they suddenly need his CPR skills.
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