World's Strongest Dad

Last week a co-worker sent around an email with an evil .pdf file attachment of an amazing article from Sports Illustrated. Happily, I was able to find the article reproduced on the Internet. The world’s strongest dad, in case you were wondering, is not a muscle-bound Mr. Olympian who happens to have a couple of kids. He’s a 65-year-old Massachusetts man named Dick Hoyt who has spent the last quarter-century competing with his wheelchair-bound son in marathons, climbing mountains with his son on his back, and towing his son in a dinghy in swimming competitions:

"[A]fter a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out [on his computer], ‘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 so Hoyt kept giving his son that physically-liberating experience by continuing to take his son on sporting adventures. Rick Hoyt has given back to his father by keeping his dad in such great shape that the senior Hoyt survived a heart attack doctors told him he might not have survived without the strength he’d gained from exercising. Rick does have one wish though:

"’The thing I’d most like,’ Rick types, ‘is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once.’"

GET THE (LIFE-AFFIRMING) STORY.

There are those who would say that Rick Hoyt’s severe physical disabilities meant that his life wasn’t worth living. Dick and Rick Hoyt have proved them wrong. And that’s how we’ll rebuild the Culture of Life:

One family at a time.

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

4 thoughts on “World's Strongest Dad”

  2. I had the honor of witnessing this team myself when I did my one (and only) triathlon about 17 years ago. At least, I believe it must have been the same team. In the middle of the bike portion, I noticed a cyclist up ahead whom I thought I could overtake. This was a great motivator for me, as I was being passed by pretty much every other cyclist in the event. When I did overtake that cyclist, I understood why. He was riding a bicycle rigged to transport not only himself, but a good-sized teenager as well, who was obviously quadraplegic. Completing the triathlon was an enormous challenge for me, who had never been able to swim more than 25 yards until two years earlier. When I saw that team out there on the road, I had plenty of motivation to finish the race, no matter how many people might overtake me.

  3. Just curious, but what is “evil,” or even disagreeable, about a .pdf file? I’m a bit baffled. Thanks!

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