> This Father does it all just for the purpose of seeing the smile on
> his son's face. If you want to see the most profound reflection of the
> Father's love for us that you've ever seen....watch.
>
> Read this and then watch the video (the website link is at the end)
>
> Strongest Dad in the World
>
> 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 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 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 would sit in
> the chair and I would push him once.''
Here's the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjPrL3n63yg
