Founder of Free Wheelchair Mission
BY JEFFREY PARSON
The Wichita Eagle
 Once he got past the environment -- and that was no small task, standing in a small hut in the slums of Chennai, India -- he took a good look and was sure the crippled girl lying on a dirt floor could not be 17.It was 2001, and Michael Bayer was doing charity work at a clinic in Chennai when Dan Schoendorfer approached him about a funny-looking wheelchair. Schoendorfer, a biomechanical engineer trained at MIT, had spent years trying to build the most inexpensive wheelchair possible, a pursuit that ended up connecting a plastic lawn chair to tires from a mountain bike.He asked Bayer, an orthopedic surgeon from Irvine, Calif., to check out the girl on the floor, named Lotus Blossom, and make sure she could physically use the wheelchair."She was so small and depressed on this damp, dirt floor, I was sure she was more like 13," Bayer said. "Then I lifted her into that chair, and it was an amazing transformation. She was upright and just smiling. She looked 17 and lit up like the sun was inside of her."It changed her life. And it changed mine, too."That is what Bayer will ponder this weekend when he is inducted into Newman University's athletic hall of fame as part of the inaugural class. Bayer led the 1970-71 basketball team from Sacred Heart College -- as Newman was known then --to the NAIA national tournament, and the whole team will be inducted.Bayer will also be honored individually. The sweet-shooting All-American, who grew from 6-foot-2 to 6-6 in college, had 2,117 points and 933 rebounds in his career, still school records.Bayer is excited to spend time with former teammates and coaches, some of whom he has not seen in more than 30 years.What might strike him most, however, is how Sacred Heart played a key role in a series of events he could not have imagined. They have led him to be the medical director and co-founder of Free Wheelchair Mission, which has distributed more than 180,000 free wheelchairs in 60 countries."God has led every step of the way, and he does amazing things," Bayer said. "I'm just a farm boy from Garden City who got a scholarship to play basketball."A new pursuitBayer wanted to play professionally, and he moved to Kansas City before reporting to a European league.That's when Bayer received a call from three guys who were on high school all-state teams with him. They were attending the University of Kansas School of Medicine in Kansas City and playing in a recreation league.
"So I played with them for a couple months," Bayer said.
All the talk about medical school eventually changed Bayer's plans. In what he called "a really hard decision," he turned down the European offer and finished a chemistry degree at KU. He "felt like the luckiest guy" when he was accepted into KU's medical school, which he completed in just two years.
Bayer then looked for a surgical program on the West Coast when basketball again played a role. His first choice was UCLA's elite orthopedic surgery program. One of the doctors on the panel deciding which three applicants to accept also happened to be the team physician for UCLA's powerhouse basketball program.
"It was a connection," Bayer said, "and I think it gave me an edge."In the mid-1980s, Bayer helped lead a major research project about a new procedure for rotator-cuff injuries: arthroscopic decompression. The landmark paper he co-authored helped lead to a revolution in repairing rotator-cuff impingements and tears, groundbreaking procedures that are common now.The farm boy from Garden City had become one of the nation's top orthopedic surgeons."Nothing surprises me about Mike," said Jim Rheem, a Wichita businessman who was a captain on the 1971 team. "He was a lot of fun back then, and he had a great sense of humor. But he was also serious. He is a very, very focused person on anything he does."'Life's outcome'Bayer spent a dozen years as an orthopedic surgeon after leaving UCLA before deciding to take time off to be with his children and do international charity work.He was sure he would return to his practice in a few years.That changed in India, when he saw that girl's joy in her wheelchair, felt the tears on his cheeks and realized "there was another side to me I didn't even know was there."If there was ever a sign of what he was meant to do, he said, it was this: In talking with Schoendorfer, Bayer discovered the two attended the same large church in California."What are the odds?" he said.And what are the chances that the four chairs Schoendorfer initially made would turn into 44 that year and 2,000 the next?Bayer and Schoendorfer were raising money and awareness on a full-time basis, starting by inviting friends over to dinner. They also perfected the chair's production.By sticking to the original blueprint, the chairs can be manufactured in China and shipped around the world for $44.40 each. Yet they are durable enough for the terrain of Third World countries."That's all it takes to change life's outcome for these people," Bayer said, "to give them human dignity and hope."Last year, Free Wheelchair Mission raised nearly $4 million and distributed more than 70,000 wheelchairs.Bayer has pondered going back into practice, but it hasn't happened. He has "given up the life of limousines and mansions over the ocean," but it's worth it.If he ever needs a reminder, he watches a video from Lotus Blossom, that girl in India. The wheelchair allowed her to visit a clinic where she underwent physical rehabilitation for what turned out to be a case of crippling rheumatoid arthritis.After "strengthening muscles she didn't know she had," Bayer said, she started using the wheelchair as a walker.Years later, she could walk without it.
She is in college now, Bayer says. She wants to be an architect.
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