OT: Father of the Year, This is a really amazing story! Options

[LuckieO]

The following was sent to me in an e-mail. I am sure some of you have already seen this, but I thought the story was really amazing and wanted to share it with those of you who have not.

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Amazing and inspiring father and son...

The story is good, but the video is a "must see".!!
Please read story first...puts the whole story into perspective...

I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. 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, 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 Hoyt's 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. 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.''

Here's the video.... If you can not just click on this link, just retype it
and go there.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryCTIigaloQ