Published: September 07, 2009 12:07 am         

Living with MS: 2009 Multiple Sclerosis Walk set for Saturday

TERRE HAUTE — On a grassy hill in Fontanet, the bodies of old Cub Cadet lawnmowers lined a mud track, reincarnated as racing machines.

And sitting on the ground beside his own tractor that Saturday afternoon, tinkering with a wheel, Bill Flowers himself was a reincarnation.

“For a guy that can’t walk, he can drive,” friend and fellow racer Shane Stinson said standing by his own 80-horsepower garden tractor. “He drives it like he stole it.”

Flowers, like his friend Connie Hinsenkamp and others throughout the Wabash Valley, is living with multiple sclerosis and will participate in the 2009 MS Walk on Saturday at St. Mary-of-the-Woods College. Multiple sclerosis is a disease that results in damaged, hardened patches of tissue throughout the brain and spinal cord. Symptoms can vary but usually include some level of paralysis, muscle tremors, changes in sight, loss of coordination, weakness, pain and impaired cognitive abilities.

But “he can’t get it out of his blood,” Hinsenkamp said of her friend, who spent 17 years of a previous life as a mechanic at the Chinook coal mine.

Flowers, 55, was diagnosed with MS in 1999. The crippling effects of the disease left him bedridden and violently ill. It wasn’t until 2001 and the decade of therapy in between that he began to walk again, first out of a wheelchair, then with crutches, and now gradually with halting steps and less assistance.

Golfing and boating were options lost early on, tough for a 1972 West Vigo High School alumnus who competed in football, baseball and wrestling as a kid. “I’ve been competitive since high school,” he said, adding that he thought those days, and the ones he spent coaching baseball, were over.

But about three years ago, Stinson approached him about tractor racing, a hobby he’d picked up as the owner of S&S Power Plants in Manhattan.

So, in addition to modified engines, the pair rigged up foot braces to help hold Flowers in place, and he began on one of Stinson’s models. Flowers won “Rookie of the Year” his first season out.

“I support him and just say ‘go for it,’” Hinsenkamp said while standing next to one of the trailers the couple hauls their gear in now.

The 155-pound Flowers was competing on a 14-horsepower, 875-pound old Cub Cadet, guessed to have been manufactured in the early 1960s. Additional weight plates can be added to the front to bring the machine up to varying weight classes.

Dubbed the “Mighty M.O.W.tivator,” the tractor gets its name from several sources. The initials of Flowers’ 3-year-old granddaughter, Mason Olivia Weir, serve in part, as do two epitaphs, one for a friend, Mark A. Brown, and the other for his father, William L. Flowers. Both of the latter served as inspirations during the early stages of Flowers’ disease, and while they’ve passed on, their memories continue to inspire him as his granddaughter does now.

“So, that’s how it got its name,” he said.

In the meantime, Hinsenkamp is keeping herself busy with the goal of obtaining a college degree.

On her 57th birthday, the night city bus dispatcher decided she’d gone long enough without a bachelor’s degree. Over the years, she said, she’s helped friends and co-workers go back to school to get their general equivalency diploma, and since Flowers’ daughter is working on a master’s degree, she thought, “Why not me?”

“When you have MS, you have to change so much in your life,” she said, pointing out the importance of setting new goals and creating opportunities.

As part of an accelerated online program offered by Argosy University, Hinsenkamp recently wrote her first paper in 35 years and noted the difference in depth she brings to her studies than she might have 40 years ago.

Hinsenkamp was first diagnosed with MS in 1998, and it was in a support group for others suffering from the disease that she said she met Flowers, who helps support her in her new-found education goals.

Participants in this Saturday’s MS Walk can choose between a 1- and 3-mile course, both of which run through St. Mary-of-the-Woods College’s campus.

Brian Boyce can be reached at 812-231-4253 or brian.boyce@tribstar.com.