SUSSEX, Wis. - What started in the 1980s as an idea to help adults with disabilities has grown to have a much larger scope of impact.
Just ask a very proud son.
It was a great day to be on the course and a great cause. That's why a cross-section of golfers are at Ironwood Golf Course in Sussex on a sunny Thursday.
RELATED: Check out the new and improved FOX Sports app
Joe Randa is very grateful.
Randa played more than a decade in Major League Baseball after honing his skills at Kettle Moraine High School. He stays tied to his hometown and to his late mother.
Joe Randa
"In 1996 we all lost her with a car accident and I was playing with the Royals and I didn't know how it was going to affect my life," Randa said. "It did, like anyone else who loses somebody, it affects you right away. I ended up hitting .300 that year and I credit it all to those lessons when I was a kid. I might have not shown her that I was listening, but they were embedded."
Donna Lexa was a trailblazer. Exposed to patients with disabilities through work, she sensed a need for art therapy.
So she developed a program that grew into a full-service, five days a week center in Waukesha before her passing. In the ensuing years, the Donna Lexa Art Centers (DLAC) have become central in the lives of teens through seniors who have disabilities or chronic mental illness or Alzheimer's, staffed by volunteers and filled with compassion.
SIGN UP TODAY: Get daily headlines, breaking news emails from FOX6 News
"How great is that to have a student who has some special need that cannot be filled through other things but they can get some kind of fulfillment from the art, and then you're volunteering the time to see the difference you make for somebody? I mean that's kind of why you do it, right?" Randa said. "To get that vibe and that feeling of making a difference in that person's day."
The golf outing benefited DLAC, which helps raise money for the centers while also raising awareness of how art therapy can help people.
Donna Lexa's legacy lives on, impacting her family and those beyond.