After having a very hectic, stressful, frustrating day deciding what school to put Hunter in and registering him for 3, I came home and read this email from Shanda. Of course I started crying, tears dripping down may face, as I realized my life is what I make of it. There are so many out there that have it worse off than so many of the rest of us and somehow take all they have been given and turn it into something wonderful. I know I take my blessings for granted and this was a reminder of that. It encouraged me to be a better parent and give more love to my ever deserving kids. So read this story and click on the link to watch the heartwarming video.
This 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
buzz kill 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."
Click on the link Ironman to the right to watch a video of this father and his son in an Iron Man race.
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