An Interview with AFFI President, Ken Morrow

The Adaptive Fly Fishing Institute (AFFI) is one of the several beneficial organizations we provide media coverage to in Florida Fly Fishing Magazine. My interview with Ken further explains its mission and how you can lend a hand. As with all the organizations featured in F₃M, we encourage your support. Ed.

F₃M: What is the Adaptive Fly Fishing Institute (AFFI)?

KM: The institute is a non-profit corporation consisting of healthcare, education, and fly fishing industry professionals who specialize in the advancement of the use of therapeutic adaptive fly fishing and fly tying in two ways. First, we teach and certify adaptive fly fishing practitioners. Second, we provide direct service programs to a variety of special needs communities through service agreements with governmental and non-governmental institutions and organizations.

F₃M: What was its genesis—how did it get its start?

KM: I was working as a volunteer regional coordinator with an adaptive fly fishing organization when I was approached by a group of relatively high level managers from a few different departments within the federal healthcare and recreation systems about an idea they had for a robust expansion of our services to their patients. They were very impressed with the results of our work, and wanted to really ramp up the access to adaptive fly fishing and fly tying for their patients. They knew from decades of experience that this would almost immediately over-burden a volunteer workforce and outrun the grassroots fundraising upon which we relied. So they asked me to approach that organization’s executive committee about starting a business unit that would be contracted by the government to provide service on a fee-for-service basis that the government could fund – turning volunteers into paid staff and eliminating the need for goodwill donations to fund the program. In other words, they wanted to turn therapeutic adaptive fly fishing into an occupation.

I went to the organization’s leadership and they flatly rejected the proposition. They said they wanted to remain volunteers because that way they didn’t have to take orders from anyone. Over the course of the next year, I went to leaders of the other two organizations in the fly fishing community that I thought might be able to take on such a task. They also flatly rejected the notion, but in the course of my search for a home for this project, I did come across several very influential leaders within the fly fishing community and the healthcare industry who strongly believed in this vision and they encouraged me to start a new organization and lead it myself. Simultaneously, I had been doing a lot of research into just what it would take to make such an organization work. So I pretty much knew what it had to look like, how it would need to function, and what the essential features would have to be.

Eventually, I just got so frustrated with everyone else’s inertia that I said, “What the heck! If this is going to get done, I’m the only person who is going to do it.” It wasn’t about who was most qualified or the best choice to lead the charge. It was about who was willing. And apparently I was it. Even everyone else who was willing to support and join me was only willing to do just that – they were willing to join and support ME. And that’s how AFFI was born. It wasn’t my idea and it wasn’t my ambition. I was just the guy in the middle who happened to believe that it should become a reality. The rest was actually circumstantial.

F₃M: What exactly is therapeutic recreation?

KM: Well, what we do goes way beyond therapeutic recreation, which is simply the use of recreational activity as part of a treatment plan for the general health and wellness benefits of being active, socializing, and having fun…things that are good for everyone, but which most people neglect in times of stress, injury, or illness. What we do as therapeutic adaptive fly fishing practitioners is far more sophisticated. Adaptive recreation is the use of assistive devices and/or activity modifications to enable people with disabilities to participate fully in the recreational sport of fly fishing and in the ancillary craft hobby of fly tying. We also work with occupational and physical therapists, adapted physical education teachers, social workers, psychologists, pain management specialists, orthopedic and ocular specialists, and more in support of clinical motor skill rehabilitation programs, vocational rehab, substance abuse rehab programs, group therapy, and physical education programs for disabled children. What we do is technically referred to as Outdoor Adventure Therapy, which is a sub-category of Recreation Therapy. We are sort of taking it to a whole new level. For example, fly tying has almost a sixty year clinical track record of efficacy as an excellent form of fine motor skill rehab, but it has always been relatively obscure and not widely used. That’s changing now.

F₃M: Why you? What’s your interest in therapeutic recreation?

KM: I have pretty severe disabilities myself, and I fished and tied my own way back to an acceptable level of functionality without the help of any organization or group other than a local fly shop and my two doctors. My disabilities are largely the result of my military service. I’ve got two brothers who are disabled Iraq/Afghanistan vets, a nephew who has seen combat in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and a wife who is in Iraq right now. We provide a lot of service to the military and disabled veterans. For me that’s not about patriotism or serving my country. That’s about family. I am passionate about helping wounded and injured troops. It’s about the people for me, not the policies.