Where I come from...: October 2009

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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 payfor their text messaging.
But compared with Dick Hoyt, I stink.
Eighty-five times he's pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles inmarathons. Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchairbut also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112miles in a seat on the handlebars--all in the same day.
Dick's also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his backmountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike. Makestaking 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 Rickwas strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damagedand unable to control his limbs.
``He'll be a vegetable the rest of his life;'' Dick says doctors toldhim and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. ``Put him in aninstitution.''
But the Hoyts weren't buying it. They noticed the way Rick's eyesfollowed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to theengineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was anythingto help the boy communicate. ``No way,'' Dick says he was told. ``There'snothing going on in his brain.''
"Tell him a joke,'' Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns outa lot was going on in his brain.
Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor bytouching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able tocommunicate. First words? ``Go Bruins!'' And after a high school classmatewas 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 ranmore than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, hetried. ``Then it was me who was handicapped,'' Dick says. ``I was sore fortwo weeks.''
That day changed Rick's life. ``Dad,'' he typed, ``when we wererunning, it felt like I wasn't disabled anymore!''
And that sentence changed Dick's life. He became obsessed with givingRick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shapethat he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon.
``No way,'' Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren't quitea single runner, and they weren't quite a wheelchair competitor. For a fewyears Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then theyfound a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran anothermarathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the followingyear.
Then somebody said, ``Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?''
How's a guy who never learned to swim and hadn't ridden a bike sincehe was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dicktried.
Now they've done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hourIronmans in Hawaii. It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud gettingpassed 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 acantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.
This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th BostonMarathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their besttime'? 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 aguy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time.
``No question about it,'' Rick types. ``My dad is the Father of theCentury.''
And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he hada mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arterieswas 95% clogged. ``If you hadn't been in such great shape,'' one doctor toldhim, ``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 inBoston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass.,always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country andcompete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father'sDay.
That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he reallywants to give him is a gift he can never buy.
``The thing I'd most like,'' Rick types, ``is that my dad sit in thechair and I push him once.''

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