This powerful story was passed along to me by a friend--I verified it and it is totally legit. When you finish the story, make sure to take a look at the companion video link. Good luck not crying.
Strongest Dad in the World (Rick Reilly, Sports Illustrated, June 20, 2005)
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 to
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?" Here'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 25 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 waw 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.
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."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryCTIigaloQ
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