The first person to ever receive a wheelchair from Ed Butchart was a girl he met while deployed to Vietnam as a Marine.

That experience stayed with him after he retired from the service and settled in Stone Mountain, Georgia. So, in 1985, when he saw people locally who needed wheelchairs and other home medical equipment, he acted. From his garage, he started repairing and donating used items to those in need. 

Friends of Disabled Adults and Children was born. 

In 2001, Ed passed the responsibility of leading FODAC to Chris Brand.

Chris started volunteering with FODAC 28 years ago after being inspired by his childhood friend who had muscular dystrophy. He spent most days of his childhood at his friend’s house and witnessed the challenges they endured with modifying their home and purchasing medical equipment to accommodate their son’s illness. 

As his friend’s condition worsened over the years, Chris played an active role in his daily care.

“When he died, it was a crisis moment in my life and really shook me up,” Chris said. “I felt like God was calling me to do something in the healthcare field or the disability field after all this time and relationship with this family.”

The opportunity to lead FODAC as president and CEO was the answer to the calling Chris felt God has placed on his life. As Chris approaches almost 30 years at FODAC, he’s in awe of the ways God has moved in FODAC’s ministry.

“In my early years [at FODAC], I watched Ed pray for things like payroll, and he would get a check mailed in that was down to the dollar and would allow him to make payroll,” Chris shared.

For Chris, faith and prayer are an integral part of FODAC’s mission.

“Faith is a driving part of what we do. We want to pass on blessings to others through our work,” he said. “It’s a privilege to be able to come to the throne with prayers of thanksgiving but also with our needs.”

Chris has seen God lead FODAC through every crisis, from providing the finances to pay the mortgage on their warehouse to helping the organization weather economic downturns that often cause nonprofits to close their doors.

“In 2008, the market crashed, and a lot of our donors went away. A lot of nonprofits went under, but we thrived during that time because the county leveraged a federal grant and gave FODAC money,” Chris shared.

During the COVID-19 pandemic years later, Chris experienced similar provision when opportunities emerged to supply personal protective equipment (PPE) that carried FODAC through the pandemic.

“It was also a huge blessing during that time to have support from foundations that sent grants out of the blue,” Chris said. “They’d say, ‘Here, we know you’re important. You’re doing important work. Even if you haven’t asked us for funding, here’s a large amount of money to keep you going.’” 

With the backing of the community and the hand of God, FODAC has expanded its outreach to share peace and mobility inside and outside the United States.

When families are struggling or displaced because of natural disasters or hardships in their own countries, FODAC is there to provide medical aid for disabled family members. 

Chris remembers one refugee family who had a twelve-year-old child with a spinal curvature that affected his mobility. 

“They walked in carrying their twelve-year-old child, and it was backbreaking. We don’t have the ability to do custom-molded seats and wheelchairs for curvatures of the spine like this,” he explained. 

But God still provided.

“Our staff came out of the warehouse with a perfect fit from equipment we thought we were going to repurpose because we didn’t know what to do with it,” he said. “The child lit up, and the parents did too.”

Chris can recall countless other examples of the ways God has answered prayers for FODAC and the families they serve. 

“We call them ‘God moments’ here,” he said, “because we’ll get a call requesting an item and we’ll say, ‘Well, we hardly ever get that sort of thing.’ And then we turn around, and it’s literally here or coming in on the dock. And these are hard to find items. They just kind of show up at the right time for people here. So we definitely see God working all the time in moments where He’s providing for the people we’re serving.”

Whether Chris and his team are serving children, veterans or victims of tragedies and violence, they are in awe of the ways God has blessed them with equipment and the opportunity to serve and share joy.

“In Galatians 6:2, it says to bear one another’s burdens and therefore fulfill the law of Christ. That’s what we’re doing every day,” he said. “We’re just encouraged to be able to bring resources people need, to be able to be a light and to tell their story.”

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