Over at our Barkley Online Community, a colleague (Scott Loewen) posted the following passage from Sports Illustrated and a link to this video. I was so overwhelmed by it I made this comment:
"I don't think I can express in words what I'm feeling from watching
this. I've seen motivational speakers (some of them handicaped), read
motivational books and watched motivational videos, but that may be the
single-most touching thing I've ever seen in 37 years of life. I feel
engergized and like a complete failure at the same time. As I sit here
in a hotel room in San Antonio, watching my son sleep, I wonder if I
would have it in myself to do such a thing for him. Am I man enough?
From what cosmic well does this father draw such strength? And how in
the world can I ever complain again about anything in my life?"
Strongest Dad in the World
[From Sports Illustrated, By Rick Reilly]
I
try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay
for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots. But compared
with Dick Hoyt, I suck. Eighty-five
times he's pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons.
Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but
also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112
miles in a seat on the handlebars-- all in the same day. Dick's
also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain
climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike. Makes taking
your son bowling look a little lame, right? And what has Rick done for his father? Not much--except save his life.
This
love story began in Winchester , Mass. , 43 years ago, when Rick was
strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged
and unable to control his limbs. ``He'll
be a vegetable the rest of his life;'' Dick says doctors told him and
his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. ``Put him in an
institution.'' But
the Hoyts weren't buying it. They noticed the way Rick's eyes followed
them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the engineering
department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help
the boy communicate. ``No way,'' Dick says he was told. “There's
nothing going on in his brain.''
"Tell him a joke,'' Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain.
Rigged
up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a
switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate.
First words? “Go Bruins!'' And after a high school classmate was
paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for
him, Rick pecked out, “Dad, I want to do that. ''Yeah, right. How was
Dick, a self-described “porker'' who never ran more than a mile at a
time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. “Then it was
me who was handicapped, ''Dick says. ``I was sore for two weeks.'' That day changed Rick's life. "Dad,'' he typed, "when we were running, it felt like I wasn't disabled anymore!''
And
that sentence changed Dick's life. He became obsessed with giving Rick
that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape
that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon. "No
way,'' Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren't quite a
single runner, and they weren't quite a wheelchair competitor. For a
few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran
anyway, then they found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983
they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for
Boston the following year.
Then somebody said, ``Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?'' How's
a guy who never learned to swim and hadn't ridden a bike since he was
six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick
tried.
Now
they've done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans
in Hawaii . It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud getting
passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don't you think? Hey,
Dick, why not see how you'd do on your own? "No way,'' he says. Dick
does it purely for "the awesome feeling'' he gets seeing Rick with a
cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.
This
year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston
Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best
time'? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992--only 35 minutes off the world
record, which, in case you don't keep track of these things, happens
to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at
the time. "No question about it,'' Rick types, "My dad is the Father of the Century.''
And
Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a
mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his
arteries was 95% clogged. "If you hadn't been in such great
shape,'' one doctor told him, "you probably would've died 15 years
ago.''
So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other's life.
Rick,
who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston , and
Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland , Mass. , always
find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and
compete in some backbreaking race every > weekend, including this
Father's Day. That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy.
"The thing I'd most like,'' Rick types, "is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once.''
