God and Dick Hoyt
In Sports Illustrated Rick Reilly writes about Dick Hoyt and his son Rick. [I’ve adapted it only a little.] The words tell the story well but the short video sinks them in with the sound of nails being driven home—as if something lasting and lovely was being built. In this relationship we’re getting a vision of God’s heart as he works with a morally/spiritually disabled world. This kind of material is dangerous. It might even motivate some of us to want to be like him (like Dick too). Be sure to watch the video if you’re able.
“ Eighty-five times he's [Dick] 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.
This love story began in Winchester , Mass.
``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
``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 in to 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
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
Hey, Dick, why not see how you'd do on your own? From Jim McGuiggan...God and Dick Hoyt``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.''
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.
"The thing I'd most like,'' Rick types, ``is that my dad would sit in the chair and I would push him once.'' ”
Here's the video. It's worth the very few minutes it takes to watch.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com