Inspire Me (November 2006)

True stories, quotes and information on inspiration, leadership and kindness to provide hope and direction in your life.


From Sports Illustrated, By Rick Reilly

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 s tory 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 sit in the chair and I push him once.''

 


Expect a Miracle
By Dr. Kiya L. Immergluck

It's hard to believe that my old friend, Roberta, has been gone for 7 years. We were good friends in high school and went in and out of each other's lives many times over the next 30 years. Her name was Roberta Friend and the name suited her so well---she was kind & generous and had a smile that could light up a room.

The first time we got back in touch after high school was when Roberta came home to Chicago & introduced me to her beautiful baby boy named Eric. Some years later, we found each other again & she was raising her little boy alone by working as a waitress in a little Mom and Pop restaurant.

In the years before her death, Roberta took a great interest in the plight of the homeless. Almost single-handedly, she followed her vision and created a wonderful agency called "Goldie's Place" that still exists to this day. It is a place where homeless people can get all kinds of free services and support.

The last time we re-connected was as fellow cancer survivors. We attended some healing workshops together and she participated in my Support Group for cancer survivors and their families. I witnessed Roberta face her cancer with tenacity, faith and courage until the end of her life.

The Unity church (Unity in Chicago), where she belonged and gave so tirelessly of her energy and love, was filled to capacity at her Memorial service. I wondered if I would ever see her son, Eric again. He had grown into a fine young man.

Recently, I was invited to a gathering at the new home of Eric and his wife, Jean. Eric was delighted to see me after all these years and was pleased and proud to show off his beautiful baby boy who smiled that same incredible smile as his grandmother. Seeing Eric in his lovely new home with his wife and baby filled me with mixed emotions.

I felt so happy and proud of Eric and so very sad that Roberta never got to see her son's new home or her look-alike grandson. Then Eric told me a true story that turned it all around for me.

Last year, when Eric and Jean saw their townhouse for the first time, they fell in love with it immediately and were amazed how easily the process of buying the house flowed for them. When they inspected the inside of the place, Jean noticed a Unity Church book on the bookcase & discovered that the people who owned the house actually remembered Eric's Mom, Roberta.

Eric was happy about the odd coincidence, but the story got even better. At the Closing, the other couple handed Eric an amazing gift. They told him that while they were packing, they came across an old photograph taken at a party in their living room about 10 years earlier, and they wanted him to have it.

In the photo, sitting in the living room of Eric's new home, was his Mom, Roberta, smiling that wonderful smile. The photo was taken several years before Roberta became ill. And now, seven years after her death, Eric had a precious and miraculous treasure: a photograph of his mother "visiting" him in his brand new home!

I said to Eric, "I guess your Mom helped get you this house!" He totally agreed with me. I smiled up at the sky when I left the gathering: "Way to go, Roberta!" I was overwhelmed at first when I saw the photograph, and then noticed something else that made me smile. Sitting next to Roberta in the photo was a woman wearing a t-shirt with the logo: "Expect a Miracle!"


Five Dangerous Words

One crisp autumn morning, I drove downtown for a breakfast meeting with a client. I hummed along to the oldies music on the radio and found myself smiling.

When I stopped at a red light, I noticed a faint whisper of steam in front of my car. It was rising from the space between my front bumper and the back of the mini-van that stopped in front of me. I figured the source of the steam was the mini-van's warm exhaust meeting with the cold air. So I turned my attention back to the song on the radio.

At the next traffic light, the mini-van scooted through the intersection as the light turned yellow. I caught the red light. As I sat there, I noticed steam-like vapor rising from the hood of my car. But this time there was no mini-van's exhaust pipe in front of me. The cold air against my car's warm engine is causing this vapor, I thought. I glanced at my temperature gauge just in case the engine was more than warm. But the car was fine. The gauge indicated a medium temperature. So on I went.

I found a parking spot, met with my client, and then drove home.

At 6:30 that evening, I got back into my car and headed to my Monday night writing class. At a stop sign along the way, I noticed a faint bit of steam rising from the hood of my car again. I pulled a familiar bit of reasoning from my short-term memory. Okay, it's got to be the cold night air against the car's warm engine that's causing this, I figured. But unconvinced of my logic, I checked the temperature gauge. It said normal. I shrugged, drove on and got to class a few minutes later.

I took my seat and pushed aside any concern about my car's mysterious vapor. I was relieved to focus instead on the writing lesson of the week.

I had an uneventful ride home. When I walked in the door, I mentioned the vapor to my husband. "I'll take a look under the hood for you tomorrow," Steve said.

A week of tomorrows went by. Neither of us remembered to check under the hood. But I didn't see any vapor that week, either.

So I went on about my business, paying less and less attention to the car's temperature gauge each day. I figured the less I checked the gauge, the less my chances would be of finding anything wrong.

At the end of the week, I drove to my chiropractor's office. I settled into a chair in the waiting room. Not in the mood for thumbing through the old copies of Reader's Digest or People, I amused myself by looking around the room. I checked the clock on the wall a few times, noticed that the Boston fern was greener than the one I had at home, figured it must be artificial, and stared at the geometric pattern of the blue and white carpet.

Whoops. I turned back to the wall. Something next to the clock had caught my eye. Something I hadn't noticed before - despite the many times I'd been to my chiropractor's office. The something was a small, brown, wooden sign:

Five dangerous words:

Maybe it will go away.

The sign was posted to encourage my chiropractor's clients to listen to their bodies and to come in for treatment sooner rather than later. But the sign said much more than that to me that day.

In a flash it told me to attend to that vapor coming out of the hood of my car. And as soon as my appointment was over, I drove straight to the Toyota service department.

I told the attendant on duty about the vapor. One look and she had the mystery solved. "Your radiator is cracked," she told me." One more mile and it would have overheated. You must know your car pretty well to have come in when you did. It's a good thing you listened to the signs."

She had no idea what sign I'd "listened" to.

Perhaps there is a situation you face in your life that you wish would either go away - disappear with a snap of your fingers and magic phrase like "presto-change-o" - or be transformed overnight without any intervention on your part. Whether that circumstance is a dissatisfying career, an unrealized dream, a bad marriage, an injustice you don't want to mention, signs of abuse that you'd rather not acknowledge, or a mile high stack of unopened mail - one thing is certain:

Wishing that "maybe it will go away" won't make it so. Only action that supports the situation you do want to create holds the power of transformation.

Erica Ross-Krieger, M.A.