Almost all of us, from time to time, get a case of the "poor me's". We think that we have it much worse than someone else, or that we have never gotten a fair shake, or maybe our fair share of fair shakes. If you've ever felt like the world has done you wrong, you need to read this following story, and watch the video on the link provided below it. If it doesn't move you, or make you see how good you've had it in comparison to the Hoyt family, or maybe even make you feel you aren't doing enough to make the world a better place with what you've been given to work with, then you've missed the message I'm trying to impart through them, and it's possible you can't be reached.
Having said that - please try your best to let the following story reach you. If you've seen the story before, read it again. Maybe you need a refresher.
First things first -
The following article by Rick Reilly was his story for a past year's Father's Day in Sports Illustrated ...but whether about a father or a mother, a son or a daughter - that's not really the important part. What's important is the story - of Dick Hoyt, and the love that conquers all between he and his son Richard. Here's how Rick Reilly put it into words:
I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans.
(ed. a 'mulligan' is a free shot sometimes given a golfer in informal
play when the previous shot was poorly played)
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, Massachusetts, 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by his 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.
A couple of years ago, he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries was 95% clogged. One doctor told him, "If you hadn't been in such great shape, you probably would've died 15 years ago."
So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other's lives.
Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Massachusetts, always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country, and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend.
"The thing I'd most like," Rick types, "is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once."
And the video is available at the link below...
(turn on your speakers)
World's Strongest Dad
