Sherae Honeycutt

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Original Post

A year ago, Darrin Lynch wasn’t sure what his future held. A debilitating disease took away the barber’s ability to walk.

For the past 12 months he’s been fighting. He spoke exclusively with FOX4 about his inspiring story.

“I’m just not going to let anything defeat me,” Lynch said a year ago in July of 2018. “There’s no limits. People with disabilities need to know that they can do anything that they want to do.”

No limit is right for Lynch. Back then, he said he would be back to work. Today, that is exactly where he is with the help of a chair that allows him to move easier and adjust his height.

“I’m a barber at Joe’s Barber Shop,” Lynch said.

Lynch has Arthrogryposis multiplex congenita. It’s a disease that affects joints’ ability to function. He’s had it since birth, and at age 48, it took away his ability to walk.

“After going through two spinal cord surgeries, I wasn’t sure. I knew what I said, but I still wasn’t sure,” Lynch said. “Once I got the clippers in my head, it was like riding a bike. Just something I knew how to do.”

“He’s a good barber,” Joe Slatton, who owns Joe’s Barber Shop, said last year. “A real good barber. But see, with his handicap, sometimes it takes people. They have to see it first. A lot of times they’d come in and see him and be wondering, ‘Can this guy deliver?’”

“I’m like, well, I’m not back here for nothing,” Lynch said.

Lynch says he was able to get back to work through hard work in physical therapy multiple days a week at the University of Kansas Health System, but most importantly – through prayer. He is now walking with the help of a walker. His last distance was 27 feet, and to him, he said that’s like walking around the block.

“God was so instrumental,” Lynch said. “I couldn’t have done it. I couldn’t have done it. He gave me the strength to keep going.”

Next, his goal is to keep walking until he can work on his own two feet.

“Just being able to do what God meant for me to do,” Lynch said. “If you keep pushing, anything is possible. This is not all about me. This is about the message that I can give to other disabled people that things may look bleak, but it doesn’t have to be that way if you change it.”

Lynch says he is working at Joe’s Barber Shop off 63rd Street in Kansas City two days a week on Friday and Saturdays.