Power-Up 2006-2007 Keynote Speakers
April 23 and 24, 2007
 Holiday Inn Select
 Columbia, MO

sponsored by
Missouri Assistive Technology Advisory Council

Mr. de Jong is the Project Director and Principal Investigator of the Great Plains ADA Center-DBTAC located in Columbia, Missouri. The ADA Center serves the states of Missouri, Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska to which Mr. de Jong has been Project Director for the past fourteen years. During this period, Mr. de Jong has provided hundreds of site reviews for ADAAG compliance and provided solutions to existing non-compliant elements, policies, and/or programs.

Mr. de Jong was a member of the U.S. Congressional Task Force on the ADA and currently serves on the U.S. Access Board Public Rights-of-Way Access Advisory Committee. He has received numerous awards and commendations during the past 22 years for his work and advocacy in accessible design. As a consultant and lecturer, Mr. de Jong has worked in sixteen states during the past decade, working with architects, disability organizations, businesses, trade personnel, attorneys and associations.

Prior to his current employment, Mr. de Jong worked in two Independent Living Centers, was the Assistant Director of the Illinois Department of Vocational Services and the Executive Director of the Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities in Illinois. His entire career has been dedicated to supporting accessible design and the full inclusion of persons with disabilities in all aspects of society.

Closing Keynote Speaker - Team Hoyt
Tuesday, April 24, 2007

“Racing Towards Inclusion”

excerpts from article by David Tereshchuk

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.

For the past twenty five years or more Dick, who is 65, has pushed and pulled his son across the country and over hundreds of finish lines. When Dick runs, Rick is in a wheelchair that Dick is pushing. When Dick cycles, Rick is in the seat-pod from his wheelchair, attached to the front of the bike. When Dick swims, Rick is in a small but heavy, firmly stabilized boat being pulled by Dick.

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.  The couple brought their son home determined to raise him as "normally" as possible.  Dick remembers the struggle to get Rick into the public school. "We always wanted Rick included in everything," Dick said.

In 1972, a group of Tufts University engineers built an interactive computer that would allow Rick to write out his thoughts using slight head-movements.  A cursor would move across a screen filled with rows of letters, and when the cursor highlighted a letter that Rick wanted, he would click a switch with the side of his head. When the computer was originally brought home, Rick surprised his family with his first "spoken" words. They had expected perhaps "Hi, Mom" or "Hi, Dad." But on the screen Rick wrote "Go Bruins." The Boston Bruins were in the Stanley Cup finals that season, and his family realized he had been following the hockey games along with everyone else. "So we learned then that Rick loved sports," said Dick.

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 realization turned into a whole new set of horizons that opened up for him and his family, as "Team Hoyt" began to compete in more and more events.  Rick expresses, 

"What I mean when I say I feel like I am not handicapped when competing is that I am just like the other athletes, and I think most of the athletes feel the same way. In the beginning nobody would come up to me. However, after a few races some athletes came around and they began to talk to me. During the early days one runner, Pete Wisnewski had a bet with me at every race on who would beat who. The loser had to hang the winner’s number in his bedroom until the next race. Now many athletes will come up to me before the race or triathlon to wish me luck."

It is hard to imagine now the resistance which the Hoyts encountered early on, but attitudes did begin to change when they entered the Boston Marathon in 1981, and finished in the top quarter of the field.

"Rick is the one who inspires and motivates me, the way he just loves sports and competing," Dick said.

And the business of inspiring evidently works as a two-way street. Rick typed out this testimony:

"Dad is one of my role models. Once he sets out to do something, Dad sticks to it whatever it is, until it is done. For example once we decided to really get into triathlons, dad worked out, up to five hours a day, five times a week, even when he was working."

The Hoyts’ mutual inspiration for each other seems to embrace others too — many spectators and fellow-competitors have adopted Team Hoyt as a powerful example of determination. "It’s been funny," said Dick "Some people have turned out, some in good shape, some really out of shape, and they say ‘we want to thank you, because we’re here because of you’."

Most of all, perhaps, the Hoyts can see an impact from their efforts for people with disabilities, and on public attitudes toward the physically and mentally challenged.

"That’s the big thing," said Dick. "People just need to be educated. Rick is helping many other families coping with disabilities in their struggle to be included."

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 person’s eye-movements, when linked-up to a computer.

"The message of Team Hoyt is that everybody should be included in everyday life."

David Tereshchuk is a documentary television producer. He currently works for the United Nations.