DO YOU BELIEVE
that a
LIFE TIME
can be lived in a moment. . .
Maybe the saddest thing
about this one minute award winning film
is that it’s
J U S T
A ONE MINUTE AWARD WINNING FILM
(And not a an-everyday-reality)
Psssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssst
Be
A Caring Catalyst
enough to
DISPROVE
IT
A Dad’s DAD
Dick Hoyt died on March 17 and yet he’s never been more alive. . .
WHO???
Who exactly. . .
I never met Mr Hoyt
but I read/heard about him years ago
when I was still running marathons
at a pretty good clip
and an even better speed
but nothing like
Dick Hoyt
did. . .
STRONGEST DAD IN THE WORLD
RICK REILLY is a great writer and a very frequent contributor to SPORTS ILLUSTRATED and I not only bow to his craft but instead of even trying to rephrase or even poorly plagiarize him, I thought I’d share what he had to say but I deeply felt:
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 sit in the chair and I push him once.”
To see a photo gallery of Dick and Rick Hoyt, go to SI.com/teamhoyt. If you have a comment for Rick Reilly, send it to reilly@siletters.com.
“Dad, when we were running, it felt like I wasn’t disabled anymore!”
Dick Hoyt gives his son that feeling as often as he can.
Kind of gives
FATHER’S DAY
a whole new meaning, huh. . .
M A Y B E
m a y b e
all those years
all those races
all those marathons
all those Ironmen Triathlons
he wasn’t pushing his son, Rick so much
as he was pushing me
and anyone else who took notice
TO BE A NO LIMIT
d a d
TO BE A NO LIMIT
p e r s o n
TO BE
what it took
when it took
how it took
TO BE
what was truly needed
instead of merely
wanted. . .
KAZE NO DENWA (Phone of the Wind)
“Hello. If you’re out there, please listen to me.” On a hill overlooking the ocean in Otsuchi Town in northeastern Japan is a phone booth known as the “Telephone of the Wind.” It is connected to nowhere, but people come to “call” family members lost during the tsunami of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. Many visit the phone booth including a mother and 3 children who have lost their father. This documentary looks at the unique role that this phone is playing in helping the grieving process of many.
KIND OF CHILLING, huh. . . ?
QUESTION:
WHO WOULD YOU CALL
on the Wind Phone
Kaze no denwa (phone of the wind)
curling whispers from the depths of the earth
carried by the wind
through every crack and crevice
finally reaching my ear
i’ve missed your smile
your warm glow
gentle touches
please come back to me
i want to hear your voice again.
in a little town
on the coastline of Japan
stands a white phone booth
in a small backyard
in the booth is a telephone
rotary, the clicking numbers
line going nowhere
but the wind carries words
of the lost loved to us
so we can speak to them again
“grandpa, are you well?”
“i won a prize in school today!”
“is it cold over there?”
maybe i can’t hear your voice
for real again
but
if for one instant
i could say “i love you”
i’d be happy.
In Otsuchi, Japan, there is a telephone booth with a rotary phone with an unconnected phone line. It was built by Itaru Sasaki after his cousin died in 2010 as a way to talk to him and have closure. Many from Otsuchi use the phone to talk to loved ones lost in the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. Some come for one long talk to say things they could not, and some regularly visit to talk to the deceased about everyday things. It’s become a way to connect to the past and the one’s they’ve lost, since many Japanese do not usually tell people that they love them often to their face. It’s a way to lay regrets to rest. Sasaki said that he wanted the line to not connect to anything, so that his words would be carried on the wind to his cousin. And so, the wind phone remains.
. . .R E M A I N S
to let us know that
L O V E
is the one thing
IN AND OUT OF THIS WORLD
that CONNECTS US
and with or without a phone
it’s the clearest connection
you’ll ever experience. . .
Now,
about THAT Call. . .
get to dialing
The Luckiest
My parents would have celebrated
their 69th Wedding anniversary
TODAY
June 7, 2021
I believe they still do
because that
“till death do us part”
never really separates. . .
Tomorrow
June 8, 2021
Erin and I are celebrating our
35th Wedding Anniversary.
On June 8, 1986
the odds makers gave us a 35% chance of surviving our second marriage
which blended two families together
and it even went down a few percentage points when we had
o u r
two children within the first four years of our marriage.
T O D A Y:
the odds makers are ruling in our favor.
T H E Y
say
77% of couples married since 1990 reached their 10-year anniversaries according to recent census figures. It’s a supposed slight increase from 74% in the 80’s when divorces were at an all-time high.
N O W
Fifty-Five percent of all married couples have been married for at least 15 years, according to the Census report, while 35 percent have celebrated their 25th anniversaries and a special
S I X P E R C E N T
have made it to 50 years.
The Social Scientists are giving us all kinds of reasons why couples have not only leveled off the divorce train but actually turned it around:
Better Communication
More Equal Rights and Pay
Being Friends First
Compatibility
Financial Stability
Bradford Wilcox, the Director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia tells us,
“Marriage is actually becoming more stable in America and divorce is becoming less common.”
He goes on to say,
“There is sort of more of a soul mate model of marriage today. . .50 years ago, this was one of the things you did when you became a young adult. You found a boyfriend or girlfriend and if you were pretty happy you’d go ahead and get married. . .Today the bar for marriage is much higher because people want a soul mate, not just a spouse. And a soul mate should be someone who is capable of providing you with emotional fulfillment, an intense relationship.”
What do I know after 35 years?
I know
that I can give the World, but Erin can bring me home.
I know
that we can show each other what we can never see by ourselves
I know
that she’s a beautiful blue ocean and I’m an extensive sandy shore
I know
that her Better
conquers my Worse
I know
that her Richness
obliterates my Poverty
I know
her Health
cures my Illnesses
I know
her Love is my never ending Christmas Day
I most ultimately know
I’m not
the strongest,
the bravest,
the smartest,
the brightest,
the thinnest,
the fastest,
the surest,
the most handsome
but no one can ever convince me
that I’m not the
l u c k i e s t
The one thing after all of these years
I absolutely-for-the-life-of-me-cannot-figure-out:
Why she said
Y E S
but I’m in heaven now and forevermore
because she
did. . .
Great relationships aren’t the ones that last a lifetime,
they’re ones that last a second past eternity.
I don’t know what the percentages of
T H A T
a r e. . .
but when you have it. . .
you no longer care;
It’s a Math
you can’t figure out
but adds up
a n y w a y
(and we just can’t stop smiling)
A HALLELUJAH MEMORIAL DAY
Happy Memorial Day.
How can you assure it?
One simple word:
R E-M E M B E R I N G
–literally, by putting together the Pieces of your Life that have meaning and significance to you the Ones who make those Memories worth
RE-Membering–Putting back together. . .
The World will debate and argue, but the greatest forces in and out of this World
are our Memories and the Love that makes those memories
significant,
meaningful
and always worth
observing and celebrating. . .
It’s easy to
J U S T
Limit these Memories to our Veterans
or for those who have recently died,
but any day we truly
RE-Member,
that we actually put together those snipets of
Once Upon a Times
and ‘Remember When’s’
that put all those glorious colors to the
Tapestry of our Lives,
becomes a true Memorial Day.
Like any Holiday,
it really is celebrated most,
not so much on it’s Noted,
Dated Day,
but when fully Recognized,
Realized,
Revitalized
again and again and again with,
yes, that one single,
beautiful thing called
M e m o r y
So, on this Memorial Day,
R E – M E M B E R :
It’s not enough for us to just merely
Remember,
but for us to just simply Re-Member one thought,
one memory
past Eternity.
T r u l y:
Give thanks not so much for those who have died;
but for those who still fully live within us all. . .
F i v e W o r d s:
H a p p y M e m o r i a l D a y. . .
T H A N K
Y O U
DON’T LOVE
There really is a guarantee. . .
It’s a lockdown
full proof
100% sealed shut case:
You will never hurt
You will never shed a tear
You will never have a sense of loss
You will never have a moment of sadness
And to get this full proof guarantee
it’s not what you have to do
it’s what you don’t have to do
and it really is this simple:
DON’T LOVE
Don’t commit
Don’t become vulnerable enough to share your innermost self
Don’t share ever with any expectation of any reward or gift in return
Don’t be available accessible and accountable. . .
And the guarantee is yours
you will not hurt
you will not grieve
you will not experience a sense of loss
you’ll never have saltiest of tears
All of this
and probably a lot more
just because you
DON’T LOVE
Deal?
Wanna shake on it?
Get an ironclad triple your moneyback guarantee
Just
DON’T LOVE
And you too
ladies and gentlemen
can have an
UNBREAKABLE HEART
It may not beat the same
but it won’t be broken,
either. . .
The Seeds We DON’T SOW
Sometimes the most important
S E E D S
there are
ARE THE ONES WE DON’T SOW. . .
It’s one of my favorite parables by
Megan McKenna
and by
SOWING
ITS
SEED
hopefully it’ll take root in you, too. . .
“There was a woman who wanted peace in the world and peace in her heart and all sorts of good things, but she was very frustrated. The world seemed to be falling apart. She would read the newspapers and get depressed. One day she decided to go shopping, and she went into a mall and picked a store at random. She walked in and was surprised to see Jesus behind the counter. She knew it was Jesus because he looked just like the pictures she’d seen on holy cards and devotional pictures. She looked again and again at him, and finally she got up enough nerve and asked, ‘Excuse me, are you Jesus?’ ‘I am.’ ‘Do you work here?’ ‘No,’ Jesus said, ‘I own the store.’ ‘Oh, what do you sell in here?’ ‘Oh, just about anything!’ ‘Anything?’ ‘Yeah, anything you want. What do you want?’ She said, ‘I don’t know.’ Well,’ Jesus said, ‘feel free, walk up and down the aisles, make a list, see what it is that you want, and then come back and we’ll see what we can do for you.’
“She did just that, walked up and down the aisles. There was peace on earth, no more war, no hunger or poverty, peace in families, no more drugs, harmony, clean air, careful use of resources. She wrote furiously. By the time she got back to the counter, she had a long list. Jesus took the list, skimmed through it, looked up and smiled, ‘No problem.’ And then he bent down behind the counter and picked out all sorts of things, stood up, and laid out the packets. She asked, ‘What are these?’ Jesus replied, ‘Seed packets. This is a catalog store.’ She said, ‘You mean I don’t get the finished product?’ ‘No, this is a place of dreams. You come and see what it looks like, and I give you the seeds. You plant the seeds. You go home and nurture them and help them to grow and someone else reaps the benefits.’ ‘Oh,’ she said. And she left the store without buying anything.”
Maybe we all need a trip to the
SEED STORE
where DREAMS COME TRUE
with the biggest question not being
WHAT SEEDS ARE YOU SOWING
or
WHERE ARE YOU SOWING YOUR SEEDS
so much as
WHICH SEEDS ARE YOU REFUSING TO
SOW
WATER
FERTILIZE
NOURISH
but expect just the same to
R E A P
It’s kind of like
making applesauce
with bananas
or a pineapple
and expecting it to taste like
Brownies. . .
A Dirty Hand
is no proof of a
SEED
SEWN
and most certainly
of one
grown or harvested. . .
Q U E S T I O N
How’s your Garden
(g r o w i n g)
Psssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssst:
See you at the
SEED STORE
. . .I hear there’s a
S A L E
(if you’re interested)
TOUCHING ART
| Please Touch the Art |
| This compelling video tells the story of an artist, Andrew Myers, who is so moved by a blind man’s joy at “feeling” three dimensional art that he is inspired to create three dimensional portraits to be experienced by people who are blind or visually impaired. Why is touching artwork so taboo? According to the producers of the film, “Prior to the mid-1800s, tactile interaction was commonplace for visitors experiencing collections of art, but as museums of art evolved, rules forbidding touch became the norm.” In this film, Myers surprises George Wurtzel, a blind artisan working in wood, with a portrait. Wurtzel delights in sharing his portrait with his visually impaired students at Enchanted Hills Camp as he teaches them by example how to work as a blind artisan. Wurtzel’s philosophy that “your life is what you decide it will be” permeates the film. |
It is such a simple simple question with such a profound and almost on answerable reply:
WHAT MAKES YOUR LIFE MEANINGFUL?
Is your life ultimately what you decide you want to make it to be or what OTHERS decide they’d like to make you be?
We are all severely handicapped
We are blind
We are deaf
We are mute
And because of THAT
Know a darkness;
Know a stillness;
Know an utterlessness
that can’t be described only experienced
And sadly, often is
And even more sadly,
Often
NEVER HAS TO BE
And The cure is when we remedy that
first of all and ourselves
we also heal it for others. . .
Test THAT
GO AHEAD
TOUCH
TASTE
SEE
HEAR
SMELL
S E N S E
beyond what
Fingers
Eyes
Noses
Mouths
Ears
can ever achieve and the
Go full on artist
Be artisan enough
To share THAT with OTHERS
So that you become the
a r t
And not just simply the artist….
A LOTTERY WINNER
T H E Y
say you can’t win the
L O T T E R Y
if you don’t play. . .
I don’t let a lot of people know
in fact,
I believe this is the first time I
O U T T E D
this little tidbit about one,
CHUCK BEHRENS
I WON THE LOTTERY
It was Friday night
and I had to do some one stop shopping on the way home
and yes,
one of the items on my
TO GET LIST
was a Lottery Ticket
because it was creeping up to close to
$400,000.00
which like everyone knows
could do a lot of damage to debt
and a lot remedy for good
so after buying all of the
THIS’S
&
THAT’S
I was making my way up to the cashier
when I passed the CARD section
and a little guy and his dad were buying some
MOTHER’S DAY cards
and he played a little game of
PEEK-A-BOO with me
. . .of course, I forgot one other thing on the list and so
I snatched it and up to the Check Out line I went,
right behind my PEEK-A-BOO Buddy and his dad
who was getting to ready to pay for his cards
only to discover he had forgotten his wallet. . .
“Your dad is so dumb he forgot his wallet,” he was telling his son and then the he told the cashier he’d be right back. . .
It was my turn to enter the stage and repeat the only lines I never had the time to memorize:
“I’ve got this.”
“No, no sir you don’t have to do that. Really, I just live around the corner and I’ll be right back.”
“Sir, please do me a good. Let me do this for you. I’ve taken my kids ‘Card Shopping’ and forgotten my wallet and remember SomeOne doing me a good. Please, let me be selfish enough to do this. I guarantee you’re doing me a favor. I’ll feel way better for this than you.”
He thanked me
. . .yes, yes, with the words,
“THANK YOU”
but even more as he wheeled his son away in the cart
telling him just above a whisper,
“SEE, SON, I TOLD YOU THERE REALLY ARE GOOD PEOPLE IN THE WORLD YOU’LL NEVER HAVE TO LOOK FOR BECAUSE THEY’LL ALWAYS FIND YOU”
For a mere $7.55 I won the
L O T T E R Y
that night
that covered more than a lot of debt
and remedied more than just a bit of good
and
T H E Y
say you can’t win the
L O T T E R Y
if you don’t play. . .
Wanna BET?
A CARING (DARING) CATALYST
EVERYONE RECOGNIZES HIM. . .Right?
ANY GUESSES. . . ?
In 1976, Shavarsh Karapetyan, an Armenian Olympic swimmer, had just completed a 12-mile run with his brother when they saw a trolley bus crash into a dam reservoir. The trolley bus sank 80 feet offshore at a depth of 33 feet. Shavarsh immediately dove in and swam to the bus and despite zero visibility, managed to kick in the back window, injuring himself in the process. He proceeded to save twenty people trapped in the bus, one at a time, for hours.
The combined effect of the cold water and his inquiries from breaking the glass window led to his hospitalization for 45 days after the incident, during which time he developed pneumonia, sepsis, and lung damage which ended his athletic career.
For years, his story wasn’t known, until an article about the event identified him by name in 1982. In 1985, he happened to pass by a burning building and rushed inside, again saving people trapped inside one at a time until he collapsed. He was again hospitalized with severe burns and lung damage.
He’s still kicking it at 66. . .Just a person. . .an awesome person that I just learned about the other day who made me think about a person, just another about to be 66 year old, ME(a-not-so-awesome-person); who may make you think about another (not-always-so-awesome person) YOU. . .
We are not often called or put in a situation to dive into freezing waters and kicking windows in or running into burning buildings and saving people at the risk of our own peril but that doesn’t mean we’re not called constantly to be caring, compassionate, loving, accepting, forgiving and giving of everyone we possibly may meet who’s not drowning in the water or burning in the fire but going through tremendous amounts of unseen hurt and personal tragedy. . .
To be
THAT PERSON
THAT CARING CATALYST. . .
ARE YOU THAT PERSON?
Psssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssst:
Never let a half picture
tell a whole story
. . .be the FILL
in the in-betweens of
Another’s Life. . .
THAT IS NOT
being heroic
THAT IS BEING
A CARING (DARING) CATALYST
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