Athlete-Amputee Mike Welsch to Speak April 3

Mike Welsch plans to run in his ninth Boston Marathon next month.

He’s also a marathon swimmer who has completed the Boston Light swim and a 28-mile swim around Manhattan.

A marathon cyclist, he’s participated in the Pan Mass Challenge for 18 years and raised more than $36,000, he said, for Dana Farber and the Jimmy Fund. He’s swum to raise money to participate in the bike ride, he said.

He’s competed in triathlons:  swum, cycled, ran.

But Welsch is missing something most other runners and cyclists and swimmers may take for granted. His left lower leg.

The honorably-discharged Marine Lance Corporal lost his leg in a motorcycle accident 30-plus years ago, at Camp Lejeune, the Marine Corps base in North Carolina, where he was stationed. 

He was drinking, he said frankly. He will pay for drinking and driving, he said, “for the rest of my life.”

That’s one topic Welsch said he will address when he speaks to members of the Woburn Residents' Environmental Network and the general public on Sunday, April 3.

He will also talk about his accomplishments as an amputee.

Welsch has always loved to swim. He started at quarries on the South Shore, he said. He swims at the four to five days a week. He’s been a member for about 20 years.

“Great place,” he said.

He started to compete in triathlons in 1986, “for fitness,” he said.

Welsch went to California twice since the summer, once for a triathlon camp, to swim and run, train and network, he said, with other Marines who had lost limbs. The program is offered by Operation Rebound, a program of the Challenged Athletes Foundation for service members, veterans and first responders who have permanent physical injuries, according to materials provided by Nico Marcolongo, Operation Rebound’s program manager.

Welsch was taught swimming techniques by “a gold medal swimmer,” Sheila Taormina.

"I thought I was a swimmer before that,” he said.

Then Welsch was recruited to participate in Marine Corps Warrior Games trials last month.

He came in fourth, he said, in a swimming competition.

"I was a contender,” he said.

“It was good to have Mike as a mentor [to newly-injured service people]," said Marcolongo,  because Welsch has been an amputee for more than 30 years—and swims, cycles and runs. 

Now the Marine Corps is taking Marines who have lost legs and training them some more; some even go back to combat, Welsch said,  “They no longer shuffle  ‘wounded warriors” out the door.”

At one time, Welsch worked for 13 years for the MDC, for a while as handicapped coordinator.

One of youths and families who met Welsch there is the Andrews family of Woburn:  parents Robert and Veronica and their son, also named Robert. Robert senior and Veronica praised Welsch for helping their son, who has special needs. Welsch taught him to swim, kayak and scuba dive, all in the MDC pool in Melrose, and play sledge hockey, around the late 1990s, according to Robert senior. Their son still plays sledge hockey in Woburn on Sunday morning, his dad said.

“He’s a good guy,” Robert Andrews senior said of Welsch. “Good people,” his wife wrote.

Then there’s his persona as a “Birdhouse Man.” Welsch used to make and sell birdhouses, based on his own designs.

In high school, he took shop for four years and earned straight A’s, he said. He got “D’s and F’s in everything else.” He spent a semester at a wooden boat-building school in Kennebunk, Maine, became a furniture maker, then the architect and builder of houses for birds. No more. He’s moved and no longer has his workshop.

Welsch will speak to WREN members and the public on April 3, a Sunday, in the conference room at the police station, starting at 1 p.m. because, he said, he is a friend of WREN treasurer Rodney Flynn. WREN is dedicated to “helping Woburn conserve and protect our environment and natural resources,” according to its Web site.

They met, Welsch recounted, because when he ran at he would always see Flynn “doing something: putting a bench in or picking up trash.”

To train for the upcoming Boston Marathon, Welsch ran a half-marathon—13 miles—in 3 hours, 32 minutes this past summer in New Bedford.  His goal time:  under four hours, so he could finish a full marathon in under eight hours. He hasn’t run Boston for three years, he said, after he was hit by a car.

Running Boston is hard, Welsch said, because the up-and-down terrain uses different muscles.

But “I can’t help but love Boston,” he said. “I’m a Bostonian.”  He has Boston Light tattooed on one shoulder, he said, and the iconic Citgo sign on the other one.

Besides his training, for about six months the Burlington resident has worked part time at the company IWALK in Cambridge that makes what he described as state of the art prosthetics. An ankle made by IWALK articulates—moves in all directions, he explained. He is a tester there, he said.

“I like being part of the medical field and helping people.”

None of his three children—Ashley, 21, Mika, 18 or Mark, 14—want to follow his footsteps as a triathlete.

During the interview, Welsch told two stories about his prosthesis. When he was at a beach in California with other amputees, a wave separated it from him. Later, Welsch said, a lifeguard came by, holding something you wouldn’t normally find at a beach.

“Anybody lost a leg?” Welsch said the lifeguard asked the group.

More recently and closer to home, Welsch ran from the Y to near Winchester Center, about seven miles. His prosthesis began to click. He got a ride to a Citgo station there, where he said a guy named Frank fixed the problem. Welsch’s diagnosis: a loose Allen wrench screw. Now he’s taped one to the back of his prosthesis—just in case.