By Josh Humphries
The Daily Reflector

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Chad Hymas, a quadriplegic business owner, told a group of more than 450 people at the Eastern Carolina Vocational Center banquet Thursday to remember to give time to people who need and deserve it. Hymas was the keynote speaker at ECVC's 43rd anniversary banquet at the Hilton Greenville held to celebrate a successful year of helping area residents with disabilities find jobs. He told the story of how he lost the ability to walk and to use his arms fully at the age of 27 when a one-ton bale of hay fell on top of him at the farm he was building with his young family. Hymas said he learned a lesson about how to handle people who are different from him as a high school basketball player when his father overheard him and his teammates joking about a quadriplegic girl that went to his high school. His father came to school and took the girl, Melanie, and the basketball team to McDonald's and forced the reluctant team to interact with her. “There is a little something that each of us could do more of,” Hymas said. “I'm talking about the giving of your time.” Hymas said that his father had vision to show him how to handle Melanie, to show him that giving her time could benefit them both. “He could have just took me off the team when he heard what we were saying, but he stepped back and got a vision,” Hymas said. After the team began sitting with Melanie at lunch on game days, under Hymas' father's direction, she was voted captain of the cheerleading squad and was ultimately featured on the Today Show. Hymas has not let his disability slow him down. In one year, Hymas has spoken at 160 different events, traveling just over 180,000 miles. He still maintains his hobby and dream of managing a 5,100-acre elk preserve with his father and has raced in marathons, coached his son's basketball team and he plays full-contact wheelchair rugby. In the summer of 2003, Chad set a world record by wheeling his chair 513 miles from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas. He also runs a successful communications company. The banquet featured a performance by the MacIntyre Family Singers, two of whom are visually impaired. They received a standing ovation after performing spiritual and patriotic songs for the large crowd. ECVC also recognized Gena Payton as employee of the year. Payton has worked at K&W Cafeteria for 19 years, where she was placed by ECVC. “She is always 10 or 15 minutes early and she always comes in with a smile,” said Collin Wade, K&W general manager. “There is never a change in her demeanor.” Payton said she loves to see people smiling and happy. “You never have to correct anything she is doing wrong because she is a model employee,” Wade said. This year has been successful for ECVC as the company has increased the number of job placements for competitive jobs by 30 percent, said Susan Daughtry, ECVC marketing director. ECVC serves Craven, Martin, Beaufort and Pitt counties. The company works with federal and local government contracts to support the mission of aiding workers with disabilities.