Firefighters have big boots to fill

Stephen Curran

Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2002 | 9:02 a.m.

In most ways, Ryan Anderson is like most other 9-year-olds.

He enjoys swimming, watching burping competitions and can hold up his end of a pie-eating contest.

But there's one way Ryan isn't like most other kids his age -- he has muscular dystrophy, a disease that keeps the outgoing boy confined to a wheelchair.

It is for kids like Ryan that Las Vegas-area firefighters will be standing in Clark County medians holding out their industrial-strength boots to passing motorists starting Friday, something they have done for 41 years as part of their annual "Boot Drive" to raise money to fight the degenerative disease.

The program is conducted in concert with the Muscular Dystrophy Association, perhaps most famous for its annual telethon fund-raiser. The boot drive helps fund the MDA's annual summer camp in South Lake Tahoe, Calif., which draws between 40 and 43 children with the disease each year.

The camp is a welcome change for the kids, whose lives are ruled by routine, said Clark County firefighter and paramedic Scott Allison, who, like many of his colleagues, served as a camp counselor this summer.

"This is a place these kids can go and nobody pokes fingers," Allison said. "This is one way to break the routine, and they love the fact that their routine has been broken."

For Ryan, the camp is exactly that, said his mother, Kerry Anderson, although he was a little tentative at first, she said.

But that shyness quickly melts away once he gets to camp. This summer, Ryan said, he made eight new friends.

"Last year I only made two friends though," Ryan said.

Like any other 9-year-old, Ryan returns from the camp each year invigorated, talking nonstop about his experiences, his mom said.

"When he comes back he's really excited," Anderson said. "Everything's camp, camp, camp."

Las Vegas resident Dee Miller, who also suffers from muscular dystrophy, remembers being filled with the same excitement after she attended a similar camp in Wisconsin in 1976.

Miller, 40, volunteers for the MDA and says the association helps give children like Ryan a freedom they do not normally experience.

"I like to see kids like Ryan run around and play like normal kids," Miller said. "I think all people (with muscular dystrophy) should have that chance."

Since its inception in 1961, the boot drive has raised more than $3.7 million for muscular dystrophy research and programs, raising only $300 its first year.

Last year alone the program raised $345,587 in Southern Nevada.

Muscular dystrophy is a degenerative group of disorders characterized by muscle weakness, skeletal deformities and loss of muscle tissue. Certain types of the disease can be fatal, while other types have associated muscle weakness but cause little physical disability.