In a recent publication by St. Bonaventure Magazine, Ocean Cure founder, Kevin Murphy, was featured as the cover story for his work. Read the full article below.
Story By Tom Missel
Thrilled with the prospect of welcoming their first child in 2003, Kelly and Brian Jacoby weren’t prepared for what they were about to hear after Kelly’s first sonogram.
“These strangers spent the day telling us everything that our son wouldn’t be able to do. That was just so crushing for parents to hear,” Kelly said.
Their unborn son had spina bifida, among other birth defects.
“We were knocked for a loop,” Kelly said. But they weren’t knocked down.
“I’m feisty. I’m from Cleveland, and no one’s going to tell us what our kid can or cannot do,” said Kelly, now a resident of Raleigh, North Carolina. “He was going to live his best life, whatever that meant.”
Tyler Jacoby had already played sled hockey and skied so when his mom saw a Facebook post 10 years ago about adaptive surfing, she was all about it. That’s when Kevin Murphy, SBU Class of 2001, walked up to the Jacobys on Carolina Beach, wearing a 5,000-watt neon yellow hat and a 10,000-watt smile.
“We became instant friends because he’s so contagious,” Kelly said. “No matter who Kevin is talking to, his light shines on them and makes them feel like the most important person in the world. There’s a fire under him that can’t be put out. He just has that kind of energy you want to be around.”
A member of the Bonnies Atlantic 10 powerhouse swim team during his time at SBU (1997-2001), Murphy grew up wakeboarding on Owasco Lake near Syracuse. When he moved to North Carolina after graduation, learning how to surf became a priority.
“It took me years to figure it out, but I loved it,” said Murphy, now a physical education teacher at Carolina Beach Elementary School after 21 years teaching science, social studies, reading and phys ed at elementary schools in the Wilmington region. “Then I applied one summer to work at a camp teaching kids how to surf and I had the time of my life.”
But a job he took working for “the Walmart of surfing lessons” didn’t feel quite right so Murphy started volunteering with other surfing charities, giving lessons to kids born with HIV, autistic children, inner-city youth and people with spinal cord injuries.
Those experiences inspired him to create Ocean Cure, a 501c3 nonprofit dedicated to improving the quality of life for people with challenges and disabilities through surfing. In the 15 years since, Murphy and his legion of devoted volunteers have provided people who never had access to the sand and surf with indelible memories.
Murphy enjoys working with surf campers so much that he often fails to appreciate the impact Ocean Cure is having.
“My wife makes fun of me because I can’t ever make it through talking about it without getting emotional,” said Murphy, who, on cue, started choking up. “We’ve had so many families tell us it’s like their second Christmas. To equate Ocean Cure with Christmas morning just blows me away. They tell us their kids would never be on the sand if it wasn’t for us, let alone in the ocean.”
The tears always come from a place of joy, from volunteers and families to people just walking down the beach who happen upon an Ocean Cure camp.
“I had a beach maintenance worker one time come up to me, and she’s just crying and hugging me. She’s like, ‘Just miles of smiles, miles of smiles,’” Murphy said. “People will stop to give us donations on the beach because they tell us what they just saw was so magical.”
Through on-the-spot donations and organized fundraisers — the 19 Jersey Mike’s sandwich shops in the Wilmington region just donated $144,136 to Ocean Cure from its 2024 Day of Giving — Murphy has been able to purchase 40 beach wheelchairs and roughly 4,000 square feet of matting to allow people in regular or motorized wheelchairs access to the sand.
Getting permission to put the matting down permanently on Carolina Beach wasn’t easy. When politicians weren’t returning his emails in 2020, he started calling, trying to understand why they were resistant.
“Imagine,” Murphy told the legislators, “that you have never touched the sand, and you spend your life in a wheelchair. But (with the mats) you can go out there, and your family can sit next to you on the sand, or you’ve got two children who were born with cerebral palsy, and now they’re playing tag on the beach in wheelchairs, just like any two children would be.”
His message got through. “They finally started opening their eyes,” he said.
And yet?
“Sea turtles,” Murphy said.
Protecting the nesting and hatching of sea turtles on Carolina Beach was a high priority.
“Well, I’ve got a sea turtle tattoo on my arm,” he said. “I told them I’m not against sea turtles so let’s work together on this.”
He laid out his plan to locate the matting in highly populated areas where sea turtles almost never nest and to monitor the beach with a live camera.
“And then we looked at the percentages and we were talking about using less than 1% of the beach to help people with disabilities,” Murphy said. “The sea turtles get the rest of the beach.”
A dedicated teacher, Murphy did admit to dividing his attention one day to teaching on Zoom and watching North Carolina legislators debate his proposal. The matting measure passed, leading one legislator to declare: “Ocean Cure has changed the way North Carolina looks at handicapped accessibility. We need to be ready because other beaches are going to be asking about this soon.”
Four years later, Murphy is working with four other Carolina beaches to help them in their efforts to install beach matting.
One population that has embraced Ocean Cure, returning year after year to Murphy’s camps, is military veterans.
Joe Brazzle, a disabled Army veteran who began working with Murphy 10 years ago when he was working with Wounded Warrior Project, said Murphy’s spirit and love of the ocean is infectious.
“I’ve been pretty passionate about getting veterans in the outdoors and Kevin has an unparalleled ability to convince people that there is healing in the ocean,” said Brazzle, an author and licensed marriage and family therapist.
“In my work with veterans I often tell them that you don’t have to do anything but be willing to challenge yourself. Kevin and his team believe that, too, and we’ve had so many veterans walk away from one of his camps having a breakthrough experience. Kevin is the type of person who believes anything is possible, regardless of the obstacles.”
Many of the veterans Ocean Cure works with are disabled in a way that’s hard to see.
“You wouldn’t know some of them are injured by looking at them, but many of them have severe PTSD, dealing with atrocities they have seen that keeps them homebound for the most part,” Murphy said. “A couple years ago, Joe told me that one of the veterans who came down for an Ocean Cure camp had brought a gun and had intended to take his life at the hotel.”
But after a day of volunteering at the camp, helping children who use wheelchairs and senior citizens gain access to the beach and ride the waves, the veteran had a change of heart.
“He saw the attitude that all the volunteers had helping people with significant challenges and he said it changed his life,” Murphy recalled.
Working with others dealing with serious afflictions, often since birth, has altered the veterans’ perspective, Murphy said.
“These veterans will stay in the water until the last person is out and will stay to help me clean up and pack,” Murphy said. “They know they’ve been dealt a difficult hand, but when they work with a 5-year-old born with muscular dystrophy who will never be able to put their pants on, yet he’s smiling and laughing and splashing them in the face with water, it has an incredible impact on them.”
Murphy’s incredible impact has been honored more than once. He’s received two keys to the city of Carolina Beach, and last October was surprised with a humanitarian award from Life Rolls On at the foundation’s gala fundraiser in Los Angeles. Murphy had become good friends with Jesse Billauer, who founded Life Rolls On in 2001 after being paralyzed in a surfing accident.
“This was one of the wildest moments in my life,” Murphy said. “They were playing a video montage of my work and I got emotional (in the video) when I was talking about the impact of a community coming together. And I feel this hand on my shoulder and it’s Sean Penn. He says, ‘Man, that was the most inspiring thing I’ve ever seen.’ And I’m like, ‘You’re Sean Penn, helping to save the Ukraine and going behind borders.’ It was wild.”
What moves Murphy to tears as much as the people he’s helping is the people who’ve been inspired to help him.
“It’s been really impactful to see the power of the community,” Murphy said. “The entire Town Council volunteers during a number of our events, which is pretty cool to see, including the mayor. The police and fire departments volunteer, too. They understand that Ocean Cure is creating volunteers in our community and teaching people to be more compassionate.”
His experiences at St. Bonaventure volunteering with Coach Sean McNamee’s swim team — at places like Mt. Irenaeus, the Warming House and the Olean YMCA — helped to alter Murphy’s perspective.
“I didn’t have that kind of exposure growing up,” Murphy said. “I was like, wow! There are some people that look like me that are going through extreme challenges. It had an impact on me and I began to appreciate our Franciscan values.”
More than anything, Murphy appreciates how understanding his wife, Danielle, and 5-year-old daughter, Olivia, have been about his dedication to Ocean Cure. Summer weekdays from June through mid-August are committed to Ocean Cure, but “weekends I dedicate 100% to family,” he said.
“None of this would be possible without their support. Both see the impact and believe in everything Ocean Cure does. It’s a lot of work and does take time away from them. Olivia absolutely loves delivering the chairs with me and meeting new people who are facing some difficult challenges in their life, and she always does it with a smile.”
As long as he’s lived on the Atlantic Coast, Murphy never takes for granted the power of the ocean and its ability to heal.
“The waves are energy and that energy has to go somewhere. When you’re on that wave, and you’re getting that pure, natural energy dissipating into you, it then turns into a euphoric energy when you hit the beach,” Murphy said. “And it can alter your perspective just by the sheer vastness of it, especially in the offseason when you don’t see anybody else and hear anything else. The ocean — so powerful that no one can control it — will humble you.”
(Missel is chief communications officer at St. Bonaventure.)