Syracuse.com - Fond memories of a CNY archery legend

[HuntingNY-News]

I sat down this week with his wife at their Syracuse home to reminisce about DiMura. We looked through photo albums, magazines that featured him, plaques honoring him. We checked out his hunting and target-shooting bows hanging in the garage.

Submitted photoJohn "Little John" DiMura

John “Little John” DiMura’s love for the outdoors was undeniable, and he made a big impact on the Central New York bowhunting scene.

DiMura, a colorful guy who lived his last 34 years as a quadriplegic, didn’t let his handicap deter him while he ran a successful archery shop in Syracuse with his wife, Sherry. He also enjoyed deer hunting and competitive archery, thanks to innovative modifications to his bow and wheelchair.

He was also instrumental in getting legislation passed for the state’s first “handicapped archer” permit, which enabled hunters in wheelchairs and others with handicapped to enjoy their passion.

He died Dec. 2 of lung cancer. He was 77.

I sat down this week with his wife at their Syracuse home to reminisce about DiMura. We looked through photo albums, magazines that featured him, plaques honoring him. We checked out his hunting and target-shooting bows hanging in the garage.

Submitted photoJohn DiMura was one of the forces behind legislation that cre´ated the state’s first “handicapped archer” permit. .

Sherry also showed me his trophy room, which included a nine-point buck he shot during a handicapped hunt at mall mogul Robert Congel’s Savannah Dhu, and the head of a 300-pound Russian boar he bagged with his bow at a private hunting preserve in Kirkville.

“He was a very interesting man,” she said, laughing over coffee at her kitchen table and telling story after story about their 34-year-old marriage, with its many ups and downs.

“The first time I met him was in a bar in Syracuse. He looked like a mountain man,” she said, remembering how he told her he’d just gotten back from trying to trap rabbits for a woman who wanted a coat.

“The next time I saw him he was all cleaned up and nice-looking. He was an outdoors fanatic. He did it all. I was just a city girl. I didn’t know anything about this hunting and fishing business — nothing.”

In his early adult years, DiMura, who was 5-foot-2, worked as a salesman for several archery companies and he shot competitively on the Professional Archers Association tour. One company, Darton, named a bow after him.

At age 32, a surgical procedure on DiMura’s neck paralyzed him from the chest down. During his time in the hospital, he and Sherry reconnected.

Three days after he got out of the hospital, they were married. Sherry said many friends and family tried to discourage her from marrying Little John, noting his handicap. The two were determined to prove everybody wrong.

In 1980, they opened an archery shop, Arrowhead Archery Lanes and Sports Center, in East Syracuse, later moving it to Lyncourt.

“We were talking about how we had to do something,” Sherry said. “John said, ‘All I know is archery.’ So, that’s what we did.”

She said her husband got tremendous support from his numerous outdoors acquaintances and friends who wanted to keep him in the outdoors game — and they did.

His close friends (Sherry called them “the boys”) helped rig up Little John’s wheelchair with a device that held his bow in place and enabled him to move it up and down, side to side, with a mouthpiece. He fired the bow by nudging a trigger with the side of his hand. One of his friends had to cock the bow.

But that was illegal at the time. DiMura was instrumental in lobbying for the passage of a state law that allowed disabled archers to use a draw lock device, and he later developed adaptive equipment to allow disabled individuals to hunt.

Because of his efforts, he was the first person to be issued a “handicapped archer” permit in New York in 1986.

“He opened the door for a lot of us,” said George Bolender, of Ontario, a quadriplegic who is the physically challenged hunter coordinator for New York Bowhunters. “He made up my first rig, which I’m still basically using. He was inspiration to a lot of people.”

Meanwhile, DiMura competed in archery leagues at his business and was responsible for outfitting, training and mentoring hundreds of bowhunters. The DiMuras closed the shop in 1998 because of problems with his health.

DiMura was inducted into the New York State Archery Hall of Fame and in recent years worked with Advanced Strategies, a local group that arranges hunting and fishing outings for handicapped sports enthusiasts.

During their marriage, Sherry, “the city girl,” got a thorough education on the outdoors from her husband — a man who had a photographic memory and keen insight into Central New York’s prime hunting and fishing scenes.

“John taught me how to skin a deer. I could also could do ducks and other little critters,” she said. “But I did have problems with doing rabbits. I had to cover their heads with a cloth. I couldn’t take their little eyes looking at me.”

View the full article on The Syracuse Outdoors Blog