Rick Hoyt was strangled by his umbilical cord during birth. The lack of oxygen during that struggle caused brain damage, leaving him with cerebral palsy. His parents were told to institutionalize him, that he would be a vegetable with little or no comprehension of the world around him.
But Dick, his father, said, “No, we’re not going to do that. We’re going to bring Rick home and bring him up like any other child.”
Although they were told that “nothing” was going on in Rick’s brain, when he was eleven they took him to Tufts University. They asked several engineers if there was any way they could help Rick communicate. The engineers were skeptical, but Dick urged them to “Tell him a joke.” When they did, Rick laughed openly in his wheelchair. So the Tufts University engineers rigged up a computer-device where he could “point” to letters and peck them using a stick on the side of his head. Rick’s first words, using the machine, were, “Go Bruins.”
A short time after Rick was able to communicate this way, his school organized a charity run for a fellow classmate who had become paralyzed in an accident. “Dad, I want to do that,” Rick said with his computer.
Dick wondered how he would help his son participate, since he called himself a “porker” who rarely got off the couch. But with the desire to fulfill his son’s dreams, he entered the charity run, pushing Rick in his wheelchair the whole way. As they crossed the finish line, Dick said that Rick had “the biggest smile you’ve ever seen in your life.”
Later, when it was over, Rick typed, “Dad, when we were running, it felt like I was not disabled anymore.”
These words changed Dick’s life. If running made his son feel like he wasn’t disabled, he was determined to make running a part of their lives forever.
Since that first charity run, Dick has pushed his son in—get this—85 marathons, each one 26.2 miles. They have run in the Boston Marathon over 24 times, with Dick pushing his son the entire way.
“He’s the one who has motivated me,” said Dick about his son, “because if it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be out there competing. What I’m doing is loaning Rick my arms and legs so he can be out there competing like everybody else.”
Not only have Dick and son Rick, often called “Team Hoyt,” entered marathons, but 212 triathlons, including eight where Dick not only ran, pushing Rick in his wheelchair, but also swam, pulling Rick 2.4 miles in a dinghy, and rode 112 miles in a bicycle with Rick sitting in a specialized seat attached to the bike.
With all this competing, Dick has certainly gotten himself into great physical condition. When he suffered a mild heart attack at age 63, his arteries were examined and his physician told him, “if you hadn’t been in such great shape, you would have died fifteen years ago.” So his devotion to his son has prolonged his life.
“My Dad is the father of the century,” Rick types on his computer. “The thing I’d most like is that my Dad sit in the chair and I push him once.”
Read my follow-up block about the Hoyts by clicking here.
For more information, visit the TEAM HOYT website.
Quotes used in this blog entry were taken from www.CNN.com, Jim Huber, November 29, 1999, and www.coolrunnings.com, Lin Molloy, April 10 2005.