Brantly Poling sits in “Buckle” in the Vienna family’s living room Monday as his mother, Brooke Poling, looks on.
VIENNA, W.Va. — There is no substitute for the original. But Brantly Poling was content to have a substitute. Wheels are wheels and wheels get you places. Especially when one is 3 years old and has spina bifida.
Brantly’s $5,000 custom wheelchair was taken as it was parked beside a set of steps outside the Polings’ 19th Street home in Vienna on Feb. 8.
Last Saturday, “Buckle,” Brantly’s name for the chair, reappeared beside the home in the same spot as it had disappeared.
“I arrived home at 8 p.m. Saturday and started honking the horn of my vehicle,” Brooke Poling, Brantly’s mother, said. “Rocky walked out and he saw it too. There was Buckle. Right where it had been taken from.
“Rocky said when he was outside at 1 p.m. it wasn’t there. So sometime between 1 and 8 p.m. Buckle was brought back. The only thing missing was his nameplate off the back support.”
According to Brooke, Buckle was found by as a yet unidentified to her Vienna woman also living on 19th Street.
“Vienna Police told me a woman ‘found it’ alongside a road. They followed tracks left when Buckle was returned to an apartment nearby,” Brooke said.
She said police were still trying to determine the validity of the report they were given by the person who returned Buckle.
“We’re hoping whoever took it, took it because they needed a chair,” Brooke said as Brantly motored about the living room, spinning circles in his 18-pound aluminum wheelchair. “If they took it just to be taking it, then they have a problem.”
Pictures could be found on Facebook Monday of Brantly wheeling around the house in his wheelchair. “We posted them to let people know we had found the chair so we wouldn’t have to be buying a new one,” Brooke said. “Brantly was a happy little guy. He saw the chair and said ‘Buckle’s back’ three times quickly.”
“Daddy carried me outside to see Buckle,” Brantly said of Saturday’s discovery. “I don’t want Buckle to ever leave again,” he added and quickly turned his attention back to the show he was watching as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse jumped about on the screen.
Brantly’s substitute chair had been built for him by Ken Bussart of Glouster, Ohio, who is a nationally known custom wheelchair builder. Brooke said Bussart has offered the family the chair he had been using as a gift so Brantly would have a backup in case something happened to Buckle.
“We’re just happy he has Buckle back,” Brooke said. “He was content to have the substitute chair but it’s pretty obvious he really does like his Buckle.”
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