Perkins TWP.

Ohio Veterans Home volunteer coordinator Linda Johnston hopes she's scored a hole-in-one with her idea to build a miniature golf course at the home.

Work on the five-hole course will begin later this week or sometime next week, completing an idea that Johnston came up with about two years ago.

Johnston said she considers the new attraction a 20-hole course.

"It's actually five holes you go through four times," she said.

The new miniature golf course will be for OVH residents and their guests. As far as OVH officials know, it will be the first miniature golf course featured in any veterans home.

"If you went to visit grandma or grandpa in a nursing home, there's not much to do," Johnston observed.

The new mini-golf area will give families a fun activity with residents, she said.

The miniature golf course is being built by Whiley Remodeling & Construction of Sandusky and will be in the OVH's patio area.

Dave Sharp, a supervisor at Whiley, said he hopes the work will proceed quickly.

"I would say in two or three weeks, we'll be done and out of there and they'll be putting," Sharp said.

Johnston is in a hurry, because she wants the residents to be able to enjoy the course while the weather is still good, Sharp said.

"She wants the guys to be able to enjoy it this year," Sharp said.

"You can't stress enough ... about how Linda's work is for the guys," he said. "Every little project she does benefits the guys out there. That's her prime goal."

The project is being paid with $25,000 raised by donations to the OVH's Volunteer Advisory Committee.

"They haven't actually given me a firm price yet," Johnston said, referring to Whiley. "It's going to be within that."

One important feature of the miniature golf course is it will be wheelchair accessible.

"Each hole is going to be connected by a walkway," Sharp said.

A person in a wheelchair will be able to play at each hole and then easily go to the next one, he said.

Sharp and Johnston worked together before on the OVH's Freedom Trail, which allows residents to walk to the cemetery without having to dodge traffic on a road. Sharp's wife, Jennifer, who died about four years ago, had worked at OVH.

"The Freedom Trail was a dream of Jennifer's," Sharp explained. "When she passed away, I approached Linda with drawings and pictures that I had taken."

The two worked together to complete the Freedom Trail.

"I told her if there's any other projects we can do or help her get done, I'd love to put a bid in," Sharp said.

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