VERY Inspiring Story (- - - And TRUE!!!)

***** WARNING!!! *****

This dangerously illegal and immoral subversive underground resistance message is being surreptitiously monitored by the Beaming Internet Government Broadband Radio Oscillation Telecommunications Hearing Electronic Reconnaissance (i.e., B.I.G. B.R.O.T.H.E.R.) as part of a coordinated official clandestine domestic surveillance investigation, in cooperation with the National Administration of Zealous Interrogation (i.e., N.A.Z.I.) and the Commission On Message Monitoring Investigative Electronics (i.e., C.O.M.M.I.E.).

Serious felony criminal charges are pending, with extreme penalties yet to be determined!

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Greetings and Salutations to All my Kith and Kin and All the Ships in Outer Space:

While checking my e-mail, I also look at reports of the latest Internet hoaxes, scams, and urban legends.

Here's one I haven't even seen (probably because I delete almost all forwarded e-mails without reading them).

This particular story is TRUE, as verified by the SNOPES web site, which investigates and categorizes currently circulating Internet legends, publishing the veracity or disproving a particular article.

I'm sharing this with you because, not only has it been verified as true, it is exceptionally inspirational.

Here is the URL for the SNOPES web site:

http://www.snopes.com/

Here is the article, which has been proven to be true:

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"STRONGEST DAD IN THE WORLD"

Glurge: E-Mail describes the Hoyts, a father and disabled son who participate as a team in marathons.

Status: TRUE

Example: Collected via E-Mail, 2006

Last updated: 22 August 2006

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I try to be a good father.

I give my kids mulligans.

I work nights to pay for their text messaging.

I take them to swim suit shoots.

But, compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck.

Eighty-five times, he's pushed his disabled son, Rick, twenty-six and two tenths miles in marathons.

Eight times, he's not only pushed him twenty-six and two tenths miles in a wheelchair, but also towed him two and two fifths miles in a dinghy while swimming, and pedaled him one hundred twelve miles in a seat on the handlebars of a bicycle, 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 United States of America on a bike.

That 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, Massachusetts, forty-three 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 eleven years old, 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.

It 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 Nineteen Seventy-Nine 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 Nineteen Eighty-Three, 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 one hundred ten pound kid through a triathlon?

Still, Dick tried.

Now they've done two hundred twelve triathlons, including four grueling fifteen hour Ironmans in Hawaii.

It must be a buzzkill to be a twenty-five 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 sixty-five and forty-three, Dick and Rick finished their twenty-fourth Boston Marathon, in five thousand eighty-third place out of more than twenty thousand starters.

Their best time?

Two hours, forty minutes in Nineteen Ninety-Two, only thirty-five 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 ninety-five per cent clogged.

"If you hadn't been in such great shape," one doctor told him,

"you probably would've died fifteen years ago."

So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other's lives.

Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Massachusetts, 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."

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URBAN LEGENDS REFERENCE PAGES
© 1995 - 2006
by Barbara and David P. Mikkelson

This material may not be reproduced without permission.

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The original author of that e-mail is unidentified.

Here is the URL for the article you have just read:

http://www.snopes.com/glurge/teamhoyt.asp

Here is the web site for "TEAM HOYT", i.e., "THE STRONGEST DAD IN THE WORLD":

http://www.teamhoyt.com/

Here is the URL for the video, which you can watch on your computer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjPrL3n63yg

If you wish to share this inspiring message with multiple recipients, then please be considerate when composing your e-mail, and select "BLIND CARBON COPY" (or "BCC"), in order to conceal the identity of each individual and preserve everyone's privacy.

Thank you.

John Robert "SAIGON" Mallernee, KB3KWS

Official Bard of Clan Henderson
Armed Forces Retirement Home
Washington, D.C. 20011-8400

NOTE: "My unpopular and controversial personal opinions are independent of my Scottish clan."