Barriers, Schmarriers

People laughed when blind athlete Erik Weihenmayer told them he wanted to climb mountains.

“They thought it was pretty funny,” he said during a benefit luncheon for Goodwill Industries of Orange County.

But the 31-year-old who lost his eyesight at 13 to a congenital disease has scaled some of the world’s highest summits, including Mt. McKinley in Alaska. He is also an acrobatic skydiver, scuba diver, long-distance biker and marathon skier.

“People’s perceptions about our limitations can be more limiting than the limitations themselves,” said Weihenmayer, who lives in Colorado.

He was among four disabled athletes presented with Walter Knott Service Awards during the recent benefit at the Sutton Place Hotel in Newport Beach.

Also recognized for championing the world of disabled sports: paraplegic tennis player Brad Parks, 43, of San Clemente, who established the National Foundation of Wheelchair Tennis; paraplegic mountaineer Mark Wellman, 39, of Truckee, and double-amputee runner Jami Goldman, 30, of Huntington Beach.

More than 300 guests--including the four children of Knott’s Berry Farm founder Walter Knott--attended the event that netted $69,000 for the services, education and training programs Goodwill provides for people with disabilities.

“It’s my pleasure to introduce you to members of the Knott family . . . one of the pillars of the Goodwill organization,” Goodwill President George W. Kessinger said as he introduced Russell Knott, Virginia Knott Bender, Marion Knott Montapert and Toni Knott Oliphant.

Walter Knott was the first person to receive a Goodwill service award in 1978. Since then, community leaders such as Carl Karcher, Ed Arnold and Betty Belden Palmer have been among those recognized for their work on behalf of the disabled.

Kessinger also told the crowd that Goodwill Industries had gone online to sell some of the hundreds of donated items it receives. “We are able to maximize their value and at the same time use technology as a way to provide employment” for the disabled, he said.

The festivities began with a welcome from Michael Valentine, benefit co-chairperson with Joann Waldron: “I was invited to sponsor a table at this event two years ago, and I got hooked,” said Valentine, president of Goodwill Ambassadors, the organization’s support group. “I guarantee that you will become overcome with emotion.”

Indeed. There was hardly a dry eye after Goldman--her strong thighs fitted with prostheses--strode briskly onstage to receive her award.

During a snowstorm 11 years ago, Goldman and a friend were trapped inside a car for 10 days. Severe frostbite made it necessary for doctors to amputate her legs below the knees.

The near-death experience in-

spired Goldman to inspire others. She began to exercise her legs rigorously. And she began to run.

Today, she holds the national 100- and 200-meter records in her class and is training to compete in the 2000 Paralympics in Australia.

“What an inspiration you are,” Knott Oliphant told Goldman as she presented the award.

Said Goldman: “I am so proud to be honored . . . and to have had a second chance at life.”

After Parks’ spinal cord was injured in a ski accident during the ‘70s, he went on to establish the organization credited with developing competitive wheelchair tennis.

From 1980 to 1989, he was ranked the No. 1 singles wheelchair tennis player in the world. He earned a gold medal in tennis doubles at the 1992 Paralympics in Barcelona and has won more than a dozen National Wheelchair Tennis singles titles.

“I appreciate the honor of being honored along with these great athletes,” Parks said.

Wellman had been an accomplished mountaineer when he took a 100-foot fall 18 years ago during a descent from Seven Gables in the John Muir Wilderness.

“I think back to when I took that fall, when I was up there 30 hours until the helicopter came to rescue me . . . and I could only think of the negatives,” Wellman said.

But like his fellow honorees, Wellman has managed to turn his life into a series of positive experiences, tackling El Capitan and other challenging peaks.

A former member of the United States Disabled Ski Team, he became the first paraplegic to sit-ski unassisted across the Sierra Nevada using only his arms.

“We all face the world with different abilities and disabilities,” Wellman said. “But we all have one goal in common--to break through our own barriers.”

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Ann Conway can be reached at (714)966-5952 or by e-mail at ann.conway@latimes.com.