When I was 18, I worked at a camp run by the United Cerebral Palsy of New York. There, I met many brave folk like Rick Hoyt. They deserve our respect, but more than anything, they deserve our friendship and understanding. Please visit the following sites to meet one of the friends I made when working at that camp.
<a href="http://www.capacityworks.com/bobsmith.html">Profile of Courage: Bob Smith</a>
<a href="http://handmadepoetry.com/speaker.html">HandMade Poetry, by Bobby Smith</a>
I am posting this video here to help spread its message of inclusion
Dick and Rick Hoyt are a father-and-son team from Massachusetts who together compete just about continuously in marathon races. And if they're not in a marathon they are in a triathlon- that daunting, almost superhuman, combination of 26.2 miles of running, 112 miles of bicycling, and 2.4 miles of swimming. Together they have climbed mountains, and once trekked 3,735 miles across America.
It's a remarkable record of exertion- all the more so when you consider that Rick can't walk or talk.
At Rick’s birth in 1962 the umbilical cord coiled around his neck and cut off oxygen to his brain. Dick and his wife, Judy, were told that there would be no hope for their child’s development.
"It’s been a story of exclusion ever since he was born," Dick told me. "When he was eight months old the doctors told us we should just put him away — he’d be a vegetable all his life, that sort of thing. Well those doctors are not alive any more, but I would like them to be able to see Rick now."
The couple brought their son home determined to raise him as "normally" as possible. Dick remembers the struggle to get the local school authorities to agree: "Because he couldn’t talk they thought he wouldn’t be able to understand, but that wasn’t true
A group of Tufts University engineers came to the rescue, once they had seen some clear, empirical evidence of Rick’s comprehension skills. "They told him a joke," said Dick. "Rick just cracked up. They knew then that he could communicate!" The engineers went on to build an interactive computer that would allow Rick to write out his thoughts using the slight head-movements that he could manage. Rick came to call it "my communicator."
In 1975, Rick was finally admitted into a public school. Two years later, he told his father he wanted to participate in a five-mile benefit run for a local lacrosse player who had been paralyzed in an accident. Dick, far from being a long-distance runner, agreed to push Rick in his wheelchair. They finished next to last, but they felt they had achieved a triumph. That night, Dick remembers, "Rick told us he just didn’t feel handicapped when we were competing."
Rick’s own accomplishments, quite apart from the duo’s continuing athletic success, have included his moving on from high school to Boston University, where he graduated in 1993 with a degree in special education.
Rick now works at Boston College’s computer laboratory helping to develop a system codenamed "Eagle Eyes," through which mechanical aids (like for instance a powered wheelchair) could be controlled by a paralyzed person’s eye-movements, when linked-up to a computer.
Together the Hoyts don’t only compete athletically; they also go on motivational speaking tours, spreading the Hoyt brand of inspiration to all kinds of audiences, sporting and non-sporting, across the country.
Rick himself is confident that his visibility — and his father’s dedication — perform a forceful, valuable purpose in a world that is too often divisive and exclusionary. He typed a simple parting thought:
"The message of Team Hoyt is that everybody should be included in everyday life."
David Tereshchuk is a documentary television producer who has worked with the Hoyts in spreading their message through the media.
To purchase Team Hoyt Videos and books, please visit the <a href="http://www.teamhoyt.com"> Team Hoyt Web Site.</a>
Rating: User: CircaRigeI 2007-03-23T02:09:49.187Z
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