By LEONARD GRAY

LULING – For a man born with no arms, Dean Navarre is certainly able to reach out to people and touch their hearts.

The Thibodaux native met St. Charles Parish residents Saturday at a Lions Club fund-raiser for the Louisiana Lions Camp for Handicapped Children.

The easy-smiling, perpetually upbeat Navarre began wondering at around age 8 why he was different. Over the years, though, he has learned to cope with any and all difficulties, and showed he is as capable as any man.

Watching him sign autographs, dance with his wife, smoke a cigarette and drive a tractor makes one grateful for one’s own abilities, while appreciating Navarre’s boundless determination.

What is more, he is the first armless Louisiana man with a valid driver’s license, and only the second in the nation.

Now age 50, he is retired from working at a limestone quarry in Port Allen. While working there, he met and married his present wife, Shelley, who managed the local Ramada Inn, 16 years ago.

The couple each have one child from previous marriages, and he has a 9-year-old granddaughter.

Navarre started with the Lions Camp as a youngster.

“I was in awe,” he recalled, as the camp had such amenities as a pool with a wheelchair ramp, back in the years before the American Disabilities Act. “The Lions were doing that in the 1950s.”

The graduate of Terrebonne High School found himself unemployed in 1992, and returned to the Lions Camp, where he cuts grass for 12 hours a day, six days a week over 170 acres of campsite.

“No matter what’s missing, you can always adapt,” Navarre said.