Jeremy King from Germantown, Maryland, wanted to be an involved dad. After surgery to remove a brain tumor, he was left with balance issues that made walking with his baby unsafe.
Jeremy and his wife Chelsie were excited about the baby but unsure how he could take their child on walks.
Chelsie said: “While he can walk, he can’t do so safely carrying a child…So we jumped into, ‘OK, what do we need in order for him to parent safely?’ and honestly, not a whole lot came up — there’s just really not a ton of resources out there for disabled parents.”
Chelsie works at Bullis School and asked a teacher, Matt Zigler, if he could help. He teaches a course called Making for Social Good where students work on projects that solve real problems in the community.
Zigler’s students had just started a new term, and he saw this as a perfect chance to get them involved. He said: “The idea of the course is to start out by trying to understand the problem, so we did interviews with the family…We talked to someone at the local fire department who actually does infant car seat installation training to try to better understand how those things work.”
The class borrowed a wheelchair from the school nurse and started working on ideas. They used 3D printing software and parts from Home Depot and kept refining their design until it was safe enough to hold more weight than a baby, testing it with cinder blocks.
Eventually, they created two working devices that connect a stroller to a wheelchair. They called it the WheeStroll. Jeremy was able to use it to take his son on a walk.
One student, Benjamin Gordon, said: “To see the smile on his face and to know that I was able to help give him that connection with his child that he wouldn’t be able to have because of his disabilities.”
Chelsie was blown away by the students’ work and how seriously they took the project. The WheeStroll ended up winning two international awards, but more importantly, it gave Jeremy something he thought he might miss out on.
