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This
story was sent to us by Gail in Sacramento. We thought
that it was deeply touching and wanted to share it with you
all:
[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 sits in the chair and I push him once.'
Here's the incredible 4-minute video....watch it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gm7XwtIJdM
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