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From healing to entertaining, ... THE DOCTOR IS IN
By JoAnn Jones
SEBRING
Dr. Paul Getty and his wife, Betty Jean, had lived in their villa at Copeland Oaks in Sebring for less than a year when one day there was a knock at their door.
Two children, accompanied by the Gettys’ friend Alice Cromwell, a nonagenarian, wanted Dr. Getty to come out and play ... on one of his unicycles.
“Alice has grandchildren who unicycle,” Dr. Getty said, “so she brought Colton and Braxton Lockner to us, and they were the first ones to join the unicycle club.”
And so began another of Dr. Getty’s many activities — a unicycle and juggling club with 50 members from the Sebring, Alliance and Salem areas that meets — after school — every Tuesday at the F.A. Sebring Community Center.
Dr. Getty, a retired plastic surgeon who turned 80 on Jan. 19, has been riding unicycles for 40 years. He not only competes on a unicycle and conducts workshops to train others, but he’s been a missionary doctor in Africa, treating leprosy and bringing others to Jesus Christ.
It’s no wonder that Don Picciano, the Director of Community Information at Copeland Oaks, nominated him as one of 50 dynamic seniors nationwide for Leading Age’s Celebrate Age exhibit in Washington, D.C. And it’s certainly understandable that Dr. Getty would be among the 50 chosen out of 400 nominations.
“Dr. Getty is a gifted surgeon who has lived a truly amazing life that focuses on serving others,” Picciano said in a press release. “Whether he is performing or healing, Dr. Getty brings happiness wherever he goes and is a living example of celebrating age.”
Betty Jean knew of the award but didn’t tell anyone until it was announced at a residents’ meeting at Copeland Oaks recently.
“I kept it a secret for two months,” she said, “because Don had planned to announce it at the meeting. Paul didn’t know anything about it.” She added that the cake they got her husband was decorated with a man on a unicycle.
Dr. Getty certainly celebrates his age by going to various schools and churches to teach unicycle skills to children and adults alike. And while he does that, he helps young people gain confidence and overcome shyness as they perform in front of others.
“Some of my accelerated students are jumping up stairs and riding the high wire,” he said. “It’s a really high-energy group.”
“We take kids to parades and also compete in races,” he said. “We’re going to the National Unicycle Meet near Ann Arbor in July. We’ll probably take two carloads.”
“We have all different sizes of unicycles stored in our garage in a van,” Dr. Getty added, “along with pogo sticks, tight ropes and teeter boards.” His personal favorite is a unicycle with wheels stacked on top of each other that stands 61/2-feet tall.
“The top turns the middle wheel backwards, and the middle one turns the bottom wheel,” he said with a grin. “I have to pedal backwards.”
His taste for adventure hurt him one time, however, when he was performing on a unicycle on a tightwire.
“I fell about 4 feet and landed on my back and fractured five ribs,” he said. “But I just got up and rode across the wire. Two weeks later I had an X-ray and learned I had broken ribs. But three weeks after the accident, I did my next performance.”
The Gettys have been at Copeland Oaks about 51/2 years, Betty Jean said.
“We’ve been married 58 years and have lived in Michigan, West Virginia and Africa,” she said. “This is a United Methodist retirement home. We saw so many places, but Copeland Oaks was just the best. We really love it here.”
The Gettys travel frequently, going to parades and competitions, but their 15 Ω years in Liberia in Africa, working through the United Methodist Church, was a most rewarding time for both of them.
“When we came, the nurses were just wrapping the wounds of the lepers,” she said. “There wasn’t adequate treatment. Paul began to get rid of their deformities through reconstructive plastic surgery.”
Dr. Getty explained that many ideas about leprosy are myths, and by the time they left Liberia, they both had helped to bring about change in the village of Ganta, where they lived and worked.
“Before, people thought that leprosy ate fingers and toes,” he said, “but that’s a myth. By the time we left, leprosy was accepted, and people with leprosy could come into town and buy things at the store.”
“Paul trained a lot of workers,” his wife said. She herself started a school for all ages and worked with the families housed in the village’s leprosarium.
“The most rewarding part for us,” she added, “was that the lepers became Christians. We saw them change physically and spiritually.”
The couple’s home displays items of appreciation from the Liberian people, including an award from the former president of Liberia, a tusk from the Humanitarian Medical Order of Knight Hospitallers, paintings and carvings that decorate the living room.
Dr. Getty also plays the piano and organ at Copeland Oaks’ vesper services twice a week and acts as a cameraman for the retirement home’s two in-house TV stations. Every two months he and Betty Jean, a soprano, perform in the assisted living area of Copeland. He also plays the accordion.
The couple attend the Union Avenue Methodist Church in Alliance, where Dr. Getty is president of the senior Sunday school class and a lay delegate to the United Methodist Conference near Sandusky every year.
And what does he do to relax?
Like any young man, he gets on his computer.