Exerpt:
[b]A special teacher
Chuck Eells leads karate classes despite having Lou Gehrig’s disease.[/b]
By Rusty Pray
Inquirer Staff Writer
Chuck Eells paced in his motorized wheelchair.
His right hand worked the joystick as he moved left and right, back and forth, among the students in the first of his two karate classes.
The 11 students, dressed in white karate uniforms with green, white, yellow or purple belts, gave their best during the hourlong class in Marlton.
“Tell them to check their elbows, make sure they’re pointing to the floor,” he said to fellow instructor Joe O’Malley, who relayed the message to the students. Most of Eells’ commands have to be relayed because he has trouble raising his voice above a whisper.
Eells, 45, has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, a degenerative, fatal disorder that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. It is the reason he is in a wheelchair and has to fight for every breath he takes.
It is not a reason for him to quit on his students.
Eells intends to keep teaching “as long as I can do something.”
“This is what makes me get out of the house,” he said. “It keeps me going.”
With his wife, Maureen, Eells teaches karate to special-needs children and adults at the Marlton Recreation Center every Tuesday night.
He holds a second-degree black belt in karate, his wife a fourth. “He let me go past him,” she said.
The South Philadelphia natives have been married for 18 years and involved with karate at least that long. They have lived in Evesham Township for 13 years and have been teaching karate to special-needs students almost that long.
Maureen Eells, 42, has been working with adults and children who have special needs since she was a student at La Salle University on her way to a degree in special education.
Chuck Eells also holds a degree from La Salle. He was an accountant at a Cherry Hill law firm before the ALS, “day by day, began stealing a piece of his body,” his wife said.
When they were younger, he wasn’t much interested in working with special-needs people and had no interest in karate. He was more of a basketball player. “I played four nights a week,” he said.
His basketball-playing days ended with torn ligaments. He and his wife took up martial arts because it was something they could do together.
At first, “I used to go by myself” to teach special-needs students, Maureen Eells said. “But when we had children on the way” - they have four, ages 8 to 15 - “he would go in my place. He found he enjoyed himself. Then he became, like, well, the kids really enjoy him being there.”
Not all of them are kids. Students in the early Tuesday class range in age from 7 to the early 40s. The proportion is about the same in the later class, which is more advanced. The students have a wide range of disabilities, some profound.
The four females and seven males in the early class were eager to please Eells. All followed instruction, with various success. All showed delight when Eells wheeled up beside them to give individual instruction. One called him Sensei Daddy (sensei being Japanese for teacher).
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