Since 1998, the Manuel F. Correllus State Forest on Martha’s Vineyard with all its paved paths and multiple-use trails has been a place that my husband, a physician, and I have enjoyed daily, a place where we could walk, run, bike, rollerblade, picnic, or fly a kite.

On July 12, 2010, all that changed. My husband was out for his daily run and was hit by an Innova Boss golf disc. Thrown from a distance of 320 feet at 60 mph, the disk cleaved through his polycarbonate glasses and then obliterated his right eye. The cornea was destroyed, the lens and the iris were obliterated, and the retina detached; the eye could not be saved. Nine surgeries and eight months later, now with a prosthesis, we wanted to do what we could to prevent this from happening to anyone else.

After five and a half years in the court system, a jury recently found that this disc was not defective and dangerous and was therefore safe.

Disc golf is promoted as a sport and a fun game. Frisbees and some discs are safe for use in multi-use public parks, while others like the Innova Boss discs clearly are not!

In 2010, the Innova Boss disc was Champion Inc. Co.’s hardest and fastest disc. It also was designed with a sharp edge, thus explaining the hatchet-like destruction of my husband’s glasses and eye. Now, they are making even harder and faster disks. The risk to people, wildlife, and nature is even greater in multi-use public parks, where the majority of these disc-golf courses are being set up, with no monitoring or management of which disks are being thrown.

These harder and faster disks are for the advanced and professional-level players and should be limited to secure locations where the public is separated and protected. A disk which can travel several hundred feet at 60-plus miles per hour in a multi-use area is a threat to us all. If losing an eye in such a violent and dramatic way was not enough for a jury on Martha’s Vineyard to make those accountable and responsible: What is it going to take? When will it be enough?

Karen M. Cullinan

West Tisbury