Phil Carpenter
2006
Phil Carpenter, a U.S. Navy Vietnam Veteran, sustained a T8 spinal cord injury in a 1972 water ski accident after his discharge from the U.S. Navy. He began marathon training in 1977 and played wheelchair basketball, racquetball, tennis, water skied, and kayaked. He was a USA Paralympian and Pan American Team member, a Healthsports instructor, equipment designer and, since meeting his wife Sis Theuerkauf, a rehab lecturer. Phil was the first paraplegic to complete Occupational Therapy School in Louisiana and worked in settings ranging from acute rehab to brain injury programs.
Phil began his athletic career as a member of the Tampa Bay Suncoasters Wheelchair Basketball Team from 1973–1985. In 1977 he became a wheelchair racer, participating in the National Wheelchair Games from 1977–1989, and from 1977–2000 he was involved in wheelchair road racing where he participated in the Boston Marathon five times, the Los Angeles Marathon, and more than 100 other races from half-marathons to 5K distances.
In 1980 Phil became a charter member and officer of the International Wheelchair Road Racers Club and developed the Wheelchair Race Directors Guidelines to assist in the integration of the wheelchair division within able-bodied road races. In 1981 Phil became a “Special Ambassador” to the United Nations by completing the famous “Continental Quest” with his friend George Murray. This was the first crossing of the United States by a manually powered racing wheelchair going coast to coast from Los Angeles, California to the United Nations Building in New York. The story of this endeavor is now a published book.
In 1982 Phil served on the Easter Seals Sports Council, and he served as the Healthsports Instructor at Vinland National Center–Lake Independence in Ihduhapi, Minnesota. He was also a Southwest Wheelchair Athletic Association Regional Board member from 1982–1986.
In 1983 Phil began manufacturing the first commercially available adapted water ski, the ESKI, and conducted numerous water ski clinics from Florida to California to help develop interest in the sport, which is now an international competition with USA teams.
In 1984 Phil became a member of the U.S. Pan American Wheelchair Team in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and again in 1986 in Puerto Rico, where he medaled in both. In 1988 Phil became a Paralympian, competing and medaling in the Seoul, South Korea Paralympics.
In 1986 Phil became the assistant director to Project GUMBO, a Louisiana Department of Education competitive sports program for orthopedically and visually impaired children. He continued working with the project until 1994. In 1990 Phil served as the deputy meet director for the 10th Veterans National Wheelchair Games in New Orleans, Louisiana.
From 2018 on, Phil was an administrator along with Candace Cable of the “History of Wheelchair Racing” Facebook page with international group membership of greater than 1,700.