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Odds Overcome

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By JOE HENDERSON | The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 10, 2008

TAMPA - Rick Hoyt's entrance into this life had been a rough one. The umbilical cord had wrapped around his neck during birth, cutting off oxygen to his brain. Doctors said he was a spastic quadriplegic - a form of cerebral palsy. He would never walk. He would never speak.

"I had never heard of cerebral palsy. They said he would be a vegetable," Rick's father, Dick Hoyt, said. "That was the word they used. Vegetable. They told us to put him away in a home."

Dick listened to another voice - the one speaking from his heart. That was in 1962.

Almost five decades later, Rick still can't walk. At least the doctors got that part right. Heaven knows they blew the rest of the diagnosis, though. If you need proof of that, head to Bayshore Boulevard this morning and you might get a glimpse as Team Hoyt rolls by in the half marathon at the Publix Super Markets Gasparilla Distance Classic.

Rick will be the guy in the specially adapted wheelchair, smiling widely as the wind rushes through his hair and spray from Tampa Bay splashes onto his face. Dick will be the guy pushing the chair, just as he has for 958 other races the two have competed in. The competitions range from six Ironman Triathlons, to 65 marathons - 25 trips to Boston - and today will make it 82 half marathons.

Dick never thought he could run or swim. And we know what the doctors thought about Rick. They might be surprised to learn he has earned a college degree and can communicate, either through a specially built computer that allows him to spell out words or through a special sign code he has worked out with those closest to him. He communicated just fine to the students of St. Michael's College in Vermont when he delivered the commencement address there one year.

Mostly, though, Rick's smile speaks most eloquently of all.

If you think that deserves applause, you're correct. Stand and cheer. No pity claps, though. The Hoyts will have none of that. Theirs is a life to be envied for its depth, love and commitment to showing the world what can really happen when you're willing to push back.

Unwanted, Now Revered

The Hoyts have become quite the phenomenon in the running world. There is a DVD about their story. Type in "Team Hoyt" on YouTube and any number of videos will pop up. They are revered wherever they go.

"I've never seen anything quite like it," said Michelle Guarino, who lent the Hoyts her condo last November so they could compete in a half-Ironman world championship in Clearwater. "He is Superman. They both are. They are wonderful. They are the real deal. I think of them whenever I want to complain about my own workouts."

It makes up - sort of - for the times when they weren't so welcomed. Organizers turned them away many times when they first showed up for races. It was a little too weird, you know? This father-son thing was fine as far as it went, but there were rules. This was serious competition.

But those organizers didn't know Rick.

Dick and his then-wife, Judy, had decided not to listen to the doctors who said it would be best to put Rick away in a place where he could be cared for properly. They couldn't have known the strength of will in that family.

Dick and Judy wanted to send him to public school but, of course, the authorities didn't go for that. Rick couldn't possibly understand what was being said in class, the suits said. Some engineers from Tufts University came by with an offer to build a special computer to help Rick communicate.

First, though, they wanted to know exactly what was going on inside his brain, so one of them told a joke. Rick laughed. His brain was working just fine. So the Hoyts raised $5,000 - which wasn't easy in 1972 - and the engineers built the computer. Rick's thought, basically, would be transferred to the computer by head movement. When a cursor traveling across the screen would land on the right letter, Rick would move his head.

He got into school.

And thus a world opened.

The Boston Bruins were having a good season back then, and the Hoyts are from Massachusetts and watch a lot of hockey. The first words Rick typed out on the screen: Go Bruins.

"He had picked up that love of sports from being around while we watched the Bruins on TV," his dad said.

That's all it took.

Learn To Cope

They never started out to be a feel-good story; they just started out to feel good. Rick liked the idea of the open road. Dick had never run more than a mile, and they didn't have the fancy racing chairs that exist today, but they showed up for the start of a local 5-miler in Massachusetts. Dick didn't count on the crown in the road that tended to make it hard to keep the chair going forward.

"I couldn't walk for two weeks after that," he said.

But they kept at it. A local welder helped adapt Rick's chair to make it easier for Dick to push, and pretty soon they were on the most famous marathon course in America - Boston, 1981.

"We didn't realize what we were doing," Dick said. "People didn't even want us there at first, but we kept coming back. That's the way we've been all our lives. It never comes up in our minds to quit."

Once you've conquered a marathon, what's next? The triathlon, of course. Rick sits in a boat for the 2.4-mile swim in the ocean; Dick pulls it by a rope attached to his body. Of course, there was one small problem at first. Dick didn't know how to swim.

"First time I jumped in the water, I sank like a stone," he said.

And there have been other problems. The boat flipped over in rough waters during a triathlon practice, trapping Rick underneath. No other help was around, but Dick got him out. They went on and finished that race. And there have been a couple of nasty spills on the bike, one when they were in the middle of nowhere, 35 miles from home. They worked it out.

"Rick and I have this bond," Dick said. "We truly believe there is nothing we can't accomplish together."

Dick is 67 now (he looks 37) and does a lot of motivational speaking; he has to turn down twice as many invitations as he can accept. And Rick, well, just look at that smile. See that face, that wonderful face, and those eyes that can light up the darkest space.

Let it shine. Let it feel the wind.

Let it keep on showing what humans can do when they listen to the heart.

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