WNYLaborToday.com Editor’s Note: Pictured above, Allen Mort - Training Director at Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers (SMART) Local 46 in Rochester, proudly displays one of the many metal axle strips that are finished off by his Union’s Apprentices that are donated to a unique non-profit that constructs a mobile chair to provide mobility to disabled children across the United States and the world.   (WNYLaborToday.com Photos)

(ROCHESTER, NEW YORK) – A chance response to a Social Media post asking for help opened the door for Apprentices at Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers (SMART) Local 46 in Rochester to begin a Labor of Love that’s providing hundreds of disabled children across the U.S. and around the globe with the life-changing gift of mobility.

Bellas Bumpas Limited is a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Organization that has for the past six years made hand-crafted mobile chairs for disabled children, which opens the door for them to gain not only the mobility that has eluded them, but provides them with the opportunity to take part in a variety of activities that many healthy children and their families take for granted.

Each mobile wheelchair constructed by Bella’s Bumbas (Pictured Below/Bella's Bumbas Video Screenshot) is comprised of a small platform made from AZEK/PVC with a plastic seat affixed to it.  And with the help of a metal axle bracket that’s readied by the Apprentices at SMART Local 46, wheels are attached to each side, which allows the child to move them with their arms in order to make the chair go.

“‘It gives them an adventure, so they’re not stuck,’” Marty Parzynski, who along with his wife, Rebecca Orr, run Bella’s Bumbas, told WNYLaborToday.com during a recent and emotional visit with SMART Local 46 Representatives at its headquarters, which is situated inside a donated residential home in the Suburb of Webster.

It was Local 46 Training Director Allen Mort who initially saw Marty and Rebecca’s call for help on a Neighborhood App in Webster.

“They were looking for help with constructing wheelchairs and they needed metal pieces (to attach the wheels).  I called them to inquire (about what they needed),” said Mort (Pictured Below between Rebecca Orr and Marty Paczynski) - who oversees a variety of training programs offered at the Union’s 10,000-square-foot facility.

Established in April 1899, Local 46 represents 425 Active and 200 Retired Members, and provides the highest quality Craftsmen - described as pre-eminent Fabricators and Installers, to its Union/SMACNA Contractors.  Their skills include: Heating, Ventilating and Air Conditioning (HVAC) Systems; Installation, service and repair of all types of commercial, Industrial and Residential HVAC Systems; Green Building Technologies, LEEDS and Indoor Air Quality (IAQ); Testing, Adjusting, Balancing (TAB) and measuring of all types of Fluids, Processes and Mechanical Systems; Direct Digital Controls and Building Automation Systems; Architectural metal work, including metal roofing and all forms of interior and exterior metal systems; and Kitchen equipment, lockers, partitions, industrial ventilation and material handling systems.

Local 46’s involvement - which is currently training slightly more than 100 Apprentices, with Bella’s Bumbas has been a godsend, according to Parzynski.

“One of our volunteers put that post out on Facebook looking for help and Allen answered.  He told us that ‘he thought his Union could help us out,’” said Parzynski, adding he gave off a “sigh of relief” after Mort made his Union’s offer of assistance.

The donated metal pieces are cut to length by the Union Apprentices (about 30 have taken part in the effort over the course of time, Mort says) and holes drilled on either end to attach the wheels with bolts on each side of the chair.

“‘When (the Apprentices learn) that it’s so meaningful, you can see it in their faces.’  ‘They take a bit of extra time because they know where it’s going.’  ‘It has to be done right because if those pieces aren’t done right, the wheels will wobble.’  ‘It’s how they look at this project.’  ‘They care,’” Local 46 Business Manager Troy Milne tells WNYLaborToday.com. 

“‘I’m proud of them, as well as our ‘entire’ Membership, ‘to give back to our community.’  We’re just not ‘Tin-Knockers,” Milne added.   

“Their Apprentices’ help ‘takes a lot off my shoulders,” Parczynski said.  “It ‘gives me more time to work on other parts.’  (Local 46’s Apprentices) ‘are helping disabled kids.’  Families ‘who have a disabled kid have tears in their eyes because they’ve never gotten anything like this.’  ‘There was nowhere else to go (to get the metal axle made) and we couldn’t do anything without them.’  Then (Local 46) ‘stepped in.’  ‘It’s an absolute godsend.’”

Bella’s Bumbas was started because Parzynski, a Buffalo native, and his wife’s great niece - Isabella, was born with Spina Bifida in June 2015.  

As she grew, it became apparent to the family Isabella had difficulty interacting with other children without the assistance of family members.

Distressed over the situation, Marty and Rebecca scanned the Internet and found what was called a Bumbo Wheelchair that they thought would benefit Isabella. 

Based on the chair’s plans that he discovered, Marty built a chair for Isabella himself, creating the jig saws needed to cut the plastic base and materials, as well as acquiring and assembling other parts - such as a flagpole base that can be used to anchor either handlebars or serve as a place for a T-bar that holds liquid medications.

Once done and introduced to using the chair, Isabella learned how to wheel the chair around and was soon chasing her siblings and friends, Marty and Rebecca told WNYLaborToday.com.

Isabella is now nearly nine years old.

Overwhelmed by the happiness they’d created, Marty and Rebecca started making more of the chairs - now 500 a year in five different sizes to accommodate children of different ages and weights and disabilities. 

Over the past six years, they’ve constructed 3,000 chairs and made them available to families who cannot afford such a luxury for their disabled child. 

The chairs (which would individually cost as much as a couple of hundred dollars each) are given to families free, with the family paying only the shipping fee to have the chair delivered to them.

To date, they’ve been shipped across the U.S. and to as many as 65 countries around the world, including Uganda and Russia, Rebecca tells WNYLaborToday.com.

In fact, one was a double shipment for a youngster who not only needed a chair, but a second so his family could affix his ventilator onto it.

Photo after photo of children - affectionately called Bumbaleers - using Bella’s Bumbas are tacked to a wall inside the manufacturing/assembly home, as well as a world map of the places where the chairs have been sent. 

Each photo has a uniting thread - replicated on all are the smiling faces of the children who are now mobile.

But no matter how heart-wrenching some of the stories are of the children who are just trying to live a normal life, the stories of how their chairs have changed their lives are remarkable.

“We got world back on one child ‘who was now able to participate in his first Easter Egg Hunt, which melted our hearts - and another child who was non-verbal, but who began to sing three weeks after getting his chair,’” Marty and Rebecca told WNYLaborToday.com.

SMART International Organizer Warren Faust, who along with Mort and Local 46 Marketing Representative Jonathan Perna accompanied WNYLaborToday.com on the interview, found himself getting choked up listening to Marty and Rebecca tell Bella’s Bumbas story.

“‘This hits you in your soul,’” he said, “‘inside and out.’”

And if this wasn’t enough, word of Local 46’s involvement with Bella’s Bumbas circulated throughout the Rochester Building & Construction Trades Council. 

An initial round of $16,000 was donated to the non-profit by the Trades Council and one of its Member Unions - Laborers Local 435, donated another $20,000, which was raised from its charitable foundation’s annual golf tournament in 2022.

And just recently, SMART Local 46 stepped up again for Bella’s Bumbas, donating another $1,000 towards their effort.

“I’m ‘not’ a religious person,” Mort admitted, “but ‘this has all happened for a reason.’” 

WNYLaborToday.com Editor’s Note: For More On Bella’s Bumbas, Go To: www.bellasbumbas.com.  And To Watch A Video Presentation, Go To: Bella's Bumbas - Wheelchairs for Kids with Spina Bifida - YouTube