Dennis Walters, Disability and Disrespect

Dennis Walters has spent almost 40 years delivering a simple message:

Don't ever let anybody tell you that you can't do something.

A paraplegic since 1974, Walters was told he would never walk again.

Yet he did.

He was told he would never play golf again.

Yet he did.

If he isn't the most positive person I've ever met, he's in the discussion.

There are some people and things, however, that make him positively angry.

Spoiled professional athletes, for instance.

"I have no use for pro sports whatsoever," he says, his eyes turning steely. 

"Zero. They’re making five, 10 million dollars, they’re unhappy."

His rise in blood pressure is absolutely palpable when the subject turns to attitudes toward the disabled. "I want you to read this," he says, producing a printout of an article by Jerry Tarde, chairman and editor-in-chief of Golf Digest. It's a remembrance of the late Frank Hannigan, the former USGA senior executive director who died March 22, 2014. The column, headlined "Portrait of a Man Who Shook Things Up," won a second-place prize in the Golf Writers Association of America's annual writing contest.

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