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An amputee, Bruce Miller found a way to golf again

After being diagnosed with artery disease in 2012, Bruce Miller was told doctors needed to remove his right leg.

"I was really afraid," said Miller, 67, of Orland Park, who contracted the disease due to his smoking addiction. "I was scared that I wouldn't be able to work and I wouldn't be able to have a normal life. When the doctors asked me what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, I was taken aback."

Miller told the doctors he wanted to be self-sufficient, he wanted to get back to work, and he wanted to golf again.

All three of those things happened, and Miller, who now plays to a 16 handicap, is grateful for how the Freedom Golf Association, a Burr Ridge-based nonprofit, has helped him and so many others adapt the game to their abilities.

"FGA is trying to get people to get out of themselves, (to) feel like they're part of something and to feel that everything's going to be OK," Miller said.

Miller, a lifelong Blackhawks fan who had a cover made for his prosthesis with the team's logo, felt so strongly about FGA that he told lifelong friend Len Sutter that he ought to become an adaptive golf coach.

And that's just what Sutter did after he retired in 2014. Now, he says, he gets the biggest kick from working with kids and young adults.

"Just to be able to hit a golf ball and see how they react and smile; I tell you - it just warms you all over," Sutter said. "It also opens your eyes to how challenged they are and what they have to go through day after day. Just things that we do automatically, it's a challenge for them.

"The determination that they have is just phenomenal."

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