Found this on another forum and reading it really touched me. Almost teared up at the end. Hope you enjoy it.

Strongest Dad in the World



[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. 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 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.''

Wauw...what an amazing story. Almost gave me a tear in my eye! Thnx for sharing Darkie!