Photo by Howard Owens.
Rob Gogolack was grateful on Saturday for the turnout at a pulled pork dinner sale at St. Paul Lutheran Church in Batavia to help raise money to modify his car so he can drive it.
Gogolack, a resident of Attica, has been diagnosed with ALS and, as he puts it, "my legs don't want to work."
The modification would enable him to operate his car like a motorcycle.
"We're going to get hand controls for my car because I drove a motorcycle, Gogolack said. "The hand controls that I'm getting work like a throttle. Throttle it up like a motorcycle, push it forward, and that's the brakes. So, since my legs don't want to work and my upper body does -- gotta do what you gotta do."
The modification will cost about $6,000. He's already paid more than $300 for a training class.
"This is great," Gogolack said of the fundraiser. "I'm a firm believer that what comes around goes around. We've been going to this church for almost 20 years now, and with that, said -- it is just really hard to put words into it, because, like, the baskets. First of all, we didn't even want to do the baskets. We're just going to do the dinner. Then everybody just came together. Hey, I got some baskets for you. I got some baskets for you. I get it. Well, now, as you can tell, there's like 50 or 60 of them out there. So I feel very, very blessed."
St. Paul Lutheran is located at 31 Washington Ave., Batavia. The dinner goes until 8 p.m. There is also vegetarian lasagna available.
