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After spending 40 years nurturing children who have developmental disabilities, a beloved physical education teacher at United Cerebral Palsy of Long Island is walking into retirement.
And walking and walking and walking — all the way from Commack to the Montauk Point Lighthouse.
Chris Polhemus is embarking Friday morning on what’s planned as a three-day trek across much of Suffolk County. It is designed to raise $10,000 for United Cerebral Palsy of Long Island’s new independent living program at The Children’s Center in Commack, where the 66-year-old teacher has spent the last 13 years.
“The kids show me every day how determined they are and the will that they have to exercise and to move their bodies,” said Polhemus, who goes by “Coach Chris.” “I’m about to do the same thing, so I decided to go on this adventure.”
With fellow staffers, students and other supporters on hand, the North Merrick native is planning to step off on his long jaunt around 8:30 a.m. — or a few hours later than he usually starts moving toward his all-weather goal of 40,000 steps a day.
“I get to work before 5:30 in the morning,” Polhemus said. “Now, the doors aren’t open yet but that’s when I do a lot of walking.”
“I enter the building about 7 am and by the time I finish with work, I have about 25,00 steps,” he added.
The idea on how to help The Children’s Center came to Polhemus late during a snowy night last winter when he was visiting his in-laws in Connecticut and pondering the end of his career as an adaptive physical education teacher.
“The snow’s coming down and I said, ‘I can’t just retire and then that’s it, it’s just nothing,’” he recalled. “I need to do something where it’s going to help the school when I’m gone.”
That’s when what is now billed as “Coach Chris’ Final Lesson” began to take shape.
“It just popped in my head, which usually, all my ideas do,” Polhemus said. “And I just decided ‘I’m going to walk, I’m going to walk from our school to Montauk Point, it was that simple.”
The first segment of the very long walk will end in Medford, with a 30-mile stretch from Medford to Hampton Bays following the next day. Then it’s on to East Hampton, before the final stretch to Montauk Point.
Polhemus and his wife, Kim, used Google Maps to lay out what he called the “safest and shortest route” of about 88 miles. A search for hiking trails, he said, yielded a path that would have stretched 130 miles, so he “nixed that.”
“I’m looking for as many sidewalks as possible or really wide shoulders,” he said. “I’m a safe person and I’m using common sense, bottom line — I’m going to make it.”
The campaign is aiming to raise money for a specialized suite inside The Children’s Center. That’s where those served by the program — which has 80 students with intellectual or developmental disabilities up to the age of 22 — would learn to live as independently as possible by developing vital skills.
“How can they participate in doing laundry, washing dishes, preparing a meal and what kind of adaptive equipment really will help them,” said Colleen Crispino, president and chief executive officer of United Cerebral Palsy of Long Island, which was founded in 1950. “So our goal is to be able to build that space here so that the professionals can help the students figure out what kind of tools will help them so that they can continue on their journey.”
Through Friday morning, more than 100 donors had chipped in to the cause, helping to push it over the $7,000 mark.
Crispino described the retiring coach’s parting gift as fitting for someone who puts motivating those he comes into contact with at the core of his time at The Children’s Center.
“It really is how he teaches,” she said. “Everything is about individualizing it for each kid, what each student can do, what motivates them to do it, whether it’s singing or the ukulele, or pushing someone around in a cart on the floor.”
Music, which Polhemus calls “the universal way of communicating,” has been part of his approach since he interviewed for the job 13 years ago while he was working as a recreational therapist for adults at a group home.
“I got down on my hands and knees and I played the guitar for every student and I was right at eye level,” he said. “They said that was the deciding factor and I haven’t looked back since.”
It’s one that began taking shape at Adelphi University in Garden City during Polhemus’s junior year, where he took a special education class and labored to get an 8-year-old boy with autism acclimated to a swimming pool.
“We went back and forth and I had good experiences and not-so-good experiences,” he said. “But at the end, I got him in the pool and I just felt this overwhelming feeling of just, ‘This is what I need to do, this is what I was put on this earth for.’”
Polhemus, who also worked 14 years as a teacher in Georgia public schools, said the last stop on his career is “where I was meant to be.”
“They just allowed me to do my thing and they trusted me, and that meant so much to me,” he said. “It was just, ‘Coach, go do your thing, we know you’re doing it with a good heart and good intentions.’ It just worked out.”
Retirement will take Polhemus full-time to North Carolina, where he said he is looking forward to “doing things at my own pace” and enjoying “music nights” with his violinist wife.
“She’s my backbone,” he said. “She is everything to me.”
He acknowledged that leaving The Children’s Center will not be easy, saying, “I’m not leaving a school and students — I’m leaving a family.”
Polhemus called his four-decade career “an incredible, incredible journey.”
“It’s such an honor to be able to come here,” he said. “It’s not ‘I have to go to work,’ I get to come to work — that’s what puts a smile on my face every single day, no exaggeration.”
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