Heart Like a Wheel

This is a heartwarming story about good people … For the past two decades, Toby Mitchum has helped his parents every way he can. Cooking. Cleaning. Shopping. Driving.
These days, that includes walking daily alongside his mother as she rides her tricycle through West Ashley neighborhoods.
Just about any day that isn’t too hot, or too cold, or too rainy, Toby is out there, escorting his mom as she gets her exercise.
Stricken with cerebral palsy, a birth defect, Mary has relied on a tricycle for transportation. But two years ago, after she broke her pelvic bone in a fall, she’s had to have Toby along for the ride.
“I get worried about her going around corners, you know, where the road dips away from the ground and there’s a place that could make her topple over,” said Toby.
Her daily route, winding through Sherwood Forest and Avondale neighborhoods, takes about 45 minutes to cover a little less than two miles. This is Mary’s third tricycle, having ridden the previous two into the ground.
Mary used to be able to stuff Toby and his brother when they were kids, in the rear basket and ride all over town to get wherever she needed to go. That included rides to the mall, nearby grocery stores, or schools.
Toby remembers trips downtown, over the bridges, in the old days. “Necessity is the mother of invention,” says Melvin, Mary’s husband, a retired government worker with a lesser degree of cerebral palsy.
One time, former Charleston Police Chief Reuben Greenberg, now deceased, flashed his lights and pulled her over, saying she needed lights and reflectors on her ride if she was going to be out after dark.
Mary used to work at the former Albemarle Elementary School located across the street from their home after it was converted into a nursing home.
The school-nursing home’s grounds have since been converted into a growing community garden. These days, Mary says she has to use a wheelchair inside her home because of her fall.
She attends physical therapy sessions at MUSC downtown, and vows that she will soon be able to give up the wheelchair for her walker. “I will. I will,” she says.
Sometimes, Mary has to repeat herself to be understood, the cerebral palsy affecting how she forms her words. But her meaning is clear when the listener catches up.
“I’m going to ride until I die,” Mary says in a tone that would make any leather-clad gang member nod.
“I wish I’d met her earlier,” says Melvin, now in his 70s. They met through a “handicap” organization when they were both in their 20s and soon fell in love. Within two years, they were married.
Toby left a Christian college in the mid ’90s to come home to take care of his parents. A seminal moment came in his younger days during a mission trip to Albania, where he helped locals and spread his understanding of God.
“He always wanted to go on a mission to India,” Melvin says proudly of his son. “New Delhi will always be a part of his heart.”
Still devout, Toby regularly attends church with his mom and dad at First Assembly of God around the corner from their Magnolia Road home.
But today, his mission is a little simpler, a little more personal. For 45 minutes a day, Toby makes sure his mother is safe.