Team Hoyt: A Father’s Love

It’s almost Christ­mas. And lest we for­get the real mean­ing of the sea­son, may this video and their story remind us of what it is all about.

What you are about to see is one of the great­est love sto­ries of our mod­ern times.

This love story began around 43 years ago, when Rick Hoyt was stran­gled by his umbil­i­cal cord dur­ing birth, leav­ing him with Cere­bral Palsy and unable to con­trol his limbs.

“Rick will be a veg­etable the rest of his life;” Dick Hoyt says doc­tors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. “Put him in an Institution.”

They didn’t.

And that was the best deci­sion they ever made.

When Rick was 11 years old, a new tech­nol­ogy allowed him to com­mu­ni­cate. He was rigged up with a com­puter that allowed him to con­trol the cur­sor by touch­ing a switch with the side of his head. With this tech­nol­ogy, Rick began to com­mu­ni­cate to peo­ple around him.

One time, he was part of the audi­ence in a char­ity run amazed at the peo­ple run­ning in the con­test. He said to his dad, “I want to do that.”

The next best deci­sion Dick made was to take his son seriously.

For the past twenty five years or more Dick, who is 65, has pushed and pulled his son across the coun­try and over hun­dreds of fin­ish lines. When Dick runs, Rick is in a wheel­chair that Dick is push­ing. When Dick cycles, Rick is in the seat-pod from his wheel­chair, attached to the front of the bike. When Dick swims, Rick is in a small but heavy, firmly sta­bi­lized boat being pulled by Dick.

One night after a race many years ago, Rick wrote on his com­mu­ni­ca­tor: “I do not feel hand­i­capped when we’re com­pet­ing.” It is that promise of giv­ing his son the best life he could give that has kept Dick run­ning all those years.

And when he was asked what he’d love to do most if a mir­a­cle hap­pens and he’s not strapped to his wheel­chair for a day, Rick answers, “The thing I’d most like, is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once.”

And that is why this is one of the great­est love sto­ries ever told.