Companions in Courage Read online

  Neither she nor her parents were prepared for the news they received just two days before Christmas. On December 23, 1994, Ali embarked on a journey that would test the heart and resolve of a seasoned athlete, let alone a twelve-year-old just beginning her career. She was diagnosed with life-threatening liver cancer.

  Together with her parents and her brothers, she was determined to fight this disease with the same high energy and competitive fire that she exemplified on the ice. When she lost her hair, her attitude was, “There is one good thing about chemotherapy. You can never have a bad hair day.” And by the end of her chemotherapy, her tumors had shrunk.

  What was left of the diseased cells was removed surgically, and Ali returned to the eighth grade the next semester. John and Anna, Ali’s parents, had anguished over their daughter’s plight, so they were deeply relieved when she was back in school. Her brothers, who missed her competition out on Snow Pond, looked forward to taking her checks again. This young woman had already faced death and could again live with joy and enthusiasm.

  One day, when Ali was noticeably quiet, her mom asked her if anything was wrong. “It bothers me that my friends don’t understand what life is all about,” Ali told her solemnly. “They’re upset because some boy won’t talk to them or they feel fat. They just don’t get it.”

  Maybe she had already matured beyond her years, gained a wisdom rare even in adults. How many people would say, as she did, “Cancer is the best thing I’ve ever gone through”? That’s a perspective only life’s harshest difficulties could mold, and one that gave her parents and brothers the strength to face the wrenching twists that lay ahead for them.

  It was only a year later that Christmas again brought an unwelcome visit—Ali’s cancer had returned. The Make-A-Wish Foundation offered the family a Hawaiian vacation, but Ali’s response was simple: “No. I’ve traveled. Let someone else have the chance to go.”

  Over the ensuing months, John and Anna worked desperately to find a remedy for Ali’s cancer. And through it all, this young woman hockey player showed the courage of a veteran, maintaining her calm and an aura of peace. When Anna broke down in tears of grief, Ali comforted her mother. “It’s okay,” she told her. “What is, is.”

  So Ali battled cancer. But an indomitable spirit proved no match for a progressive, insidious disease. Alison Pierce died on November 3, 1996, and her devastated family began to consider funeral arrangements.

  They found that Ali had made some arrangements of her own. She had asked her friends to wear red to the funeral. To honor her beloved daughter’s wishes, Anna went out and bought a red dress. We think of funerals as dark and somber, the black of the mourners reflecting death’s emptiness, but red ruled at Ali’s funeral. It celebrated the living memory of the vibrant girl who shook life by its lapels, who lived with the same vitality she had shown on the ice.

  Parents should never have to bury a child. And they certainly don’t feel much like conducting the mundane business of their own lives in the aftermath. It wasn’t any different for the Pierces. Anna felt as if she would never stop crying. John could barely manage his brokerage firm, let alone his shattered feelings. Michael and J. T. continued to play hockey, but they always felt as if they were a skater short and their games just didn’t seem to matter much.

  Thanksgiving came, three weeks after the funeral. Anna went looking for John and found him in Ali’s room, weeping and wrapped in memories. As she held him, John told her, “The best day of my life will be when I leave this world and join Ali.”

  They talked. They hugged. And they agreed they couldn’t let grief diminish them, that they needed to be strong parents for their two sons, that they simply had to live in a way that would honor the daughter they’d cherished so.

  They kept that promise. They threw their energies into creating the Ali Pierce Endowment Fund through the University of Massachusetts Cancer Center. This fund would support pediatric cancer care and research. John, an exmarathoner, got his friends and colleagues to secure pledges from their associates to sponsor them in the Boston Marathon. They set a goal—$500,000 in five years. And those who joined them became known as Ali’s Army.

  Yet they struggled. Anna, who was shy and self-conscious, was still too grief-stricken to take part publicly. When she tried to return to Ali’s classroom at Notre Dame Academy to give each girl a red carnation that symbolized Ali’s memory, she simply could not. She finally asked the teacher to distribute the flowers. Anna couldn’t bring herself to see that roomful of young, lively ladies.

  Ali’s Army began to prepare for its first Boston Marathon, which would take place about eleven months after Ali’s death. John and many of his supporters drove up to Hollis, New Hampshire, to run a half-marathon.

  He didn’t come back.

  As Anna worried where he was, as the starting time for Michael’s hockey game neared, the phone rang.

  “Mrs. Pierce, I’m sorry but your husband has collapsed,” said the caller. “You need to come right away. They are giving him CPR.”

  Anna gathered the boys together and did her best to give them the news. “Daddy’s at the hospital,” she said, “but he is strong and he loves you guys very much. He’ll be all right.”

  J. T. told her, “He’ll be okay. God would never do two terrible things to us in one year.”

  And that’s when Anna knew. Even as she frantically dialed the hospital, even as the doctor began to speak, she knew.

  “We tried everything,” he said. “But we were not able to revive your husband.”

  Ten feet from the finish line, John Pierce had fallen to the ground, the victim of a heart attack.

  Anna put her arms around her sons. She told them, “Daddy’s gone. He’s with Ali.”

  J. T. screamed and ran away. Mike hugged his mother and then both of them chased down J. T. Anna grabbed him, shook him, screamed louder than he could: “We will make it. We’re going to be all right. We are going to make it.” Perhaps if she could convince them, she could also persuade herself.

  And together, together, they sobbed.

  At the hospital, Anna looked at her husband. Fit. Handsome. How could this be? Yet in that moment of the deepest sorrow she had ever felt, she also found that peaceful calm Ali had known and showed.

  Lying next to John was his cap, the one with “In Memory of Ali” stitched on it. Anna thought about his words on that Thanksgiving Day. “He’s with Ali,” she told herself. “How can I not be happy for him and for her?”

  Bright sun played off the dying autumn leaves as she awoke the next morning. Somehow there wasn’t any question about what to do next, what to do in the weeks and months and years ahead. She had sons to raise, and her own life to live as a tribute now to both Ali and John. She had watched cancer strengthen her daughter, even as it took her from her. She had seen Ali’s death transform John and make him live even harder and more selflessly, ultimately giving his life in her cause.

  The shy and self-conscious Anna disappeared that day. The new Anna had a mission. She spoke of it at John’s funeral, reading from a letter she had written to her departed love: “I will raise our sons to be like you. And I promise you I will carry on the work you have started with Ali’s Army. But now we will call it Ali and Dad’s Army. My sweet John, thank you for all you have given us.”

  Anna became the Army’s spokesperson. She appeared on the Today show. Her aversion to crowds faded. Hockey games, races, fund-raisers, all became venues to tell her story: “I have a daughter named Ali. She left this earth, but she goes on and I continue to celebrate her life.”

  On Ali’s sixteenth birthday, Anna took a bushel of roses to Notre Dame Academy and handed them out, one to each girl in Ali’s class. On November 18, 1998, Ali and Dad’s Army—all those friends and family members, Ali’s former coaches, Michael and J. T.—staged a hockey match against the Boston Bruins alumni team. The proceeds from that game put the Ali Pierce Endowment Fund over its goal of $500,000—in just thirteen months.

&n
bsp; When Anna and the boys stood watching the runners warm up for the 1998 Boston Marathon, a reporter asked her how she felt about fulfilling her husband’s dream after such terrible pain and tragedy.

  She paused before answering. And then she said, “Two years ago, we were a family of five. A year ago, we were a family of four, then a family of three. How blessed we are today to number in the hundreds. No, this is not a tragedy. This is a love story.”

  SECTION 3

  A Father’s

  Strength

  10

  Rich Morton

  When the 1998 high school football season began in Salamanca, New York, coach Rich Morton faced two problems that were disguised as one. It would be enough if he were known only as the guy replacing a local legend and his own mentor, the area dean of coaches George Whitcher. But Rich Morton was also a recovering cancer patient.

  Coach Whitcher had led his team to seven sectional titles in twenty-five years, and he wanted to continue coaching after he retired. The school board said no and appointed Morton, who had missed the entire 1997 football season because of his illness. He had gradually regained enough stamina to coach wrestling, but it took him a year before he got his health and endurance back. When he was promoted to head football coach for the 1998–99 season, people openly questioned whether he was strong enough to weather the stress.

  But Morton prevailed. Grateful for the opportunity, willing to push himself and carefully guide his players, he led his Salamanca Warriors to a 12-0 record and into the title game against Edgemont High School.

  Winning didn’t change the other elements in Rich Morton’s life. Some things have remained constant and true to this day. Every time he goes to Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo for a checkup, he leaves grateful for the gift of life. Yes, Rich has had cancer twice. Yes, he goes to Roswell to make sure that his cancer is under control. But he comes away appreciating the blessing of his own life and the indomitable spirit of the people who are fighting for their own.

  In the fall of 1999 Rich was at Roswell for his four-month checkup. As he departed, he couldn’t help but notice a weary-looking teenage boy about the same age as most of his players at Salamanca. The doctors were drawing his blood and examining his drained body. Morton understood the kid’s struggle because he knew firsthand just how much energy cancer saps from the body. When he walked by, he gave the kid the thumbs-up sign; the boy barely smiled.

  Driving back to Salamanca, Morton couldn’t stop thinking about the young man and the hard path before him. When he met his football team for practice later that afternoon, he felt acutely aware of how healthy his players were compared to the kid he had seen earlier that day. He did not want to hear their complaints about running wind sprints or being tired. He called them together and began telling them about the boy at Roswell. The team, intent on its final preparations for the Class C state title game in Syracuse, listened carefully. Morton asked a question: “What do you guys think that kid would choose—the demand and the soreness from a few conditioning wind sprints or the fatigue from his cancer treatment?” The silence gave him his answer.

  Coach Morton, as he always tried to do, used football to teach his team about life. The lesson: “Keep things in perspective, guys. Be grateful for your health. Work hard to become better at everything you do. Don’t waste good, positive energy complaining.”

  The Salamanca Warriors had a spirited practice that night, in keeping with the emotional high of a title game. The team and everyone in town bubbled with excitement about the championship game to be played in the Syracuse University Carrier Dome. Morton felt that same enthusiasm but found himself oddly pensive too.

  He sat alone, reflecting on the last two years. In 1997, Morton wasn’t sure he would be alive, let alone a husband, a father to his kids, or a coach to his team. He had survived a bout with testicular cancer in 1991 and thought he was cancer-free until he was jogging one summer morning and had trouble breathing. On July Fourth he went to Roswell to get a checkup.

  Three days later Coach Morton was told to come to the hospital immediately. He had a softball-size tumor in his chest. He began chemotherapy the next day.

  His wife, Julie, his daughters, Britney and Andrea, and son, Eric, pulled together on a “God Job.” They reminded him: “God heaps challenges on you, and he’s there to get you through.”

  Those challenges can seem insurmountable.

  “That was a very difficult period in my life, and hopefully I won’t have to go through it again,” he says. “You don’t know if you’re going to live or die. You don’t know what tomorrow will bring. I wouldn’t wish cancer on my worst enemy.”

  Easy as it is to question fate, Morton instead stuck to a path of healing.

  “I don’t ask why it happened to me. I just asked for the strength to get me through it. I think that’s what’s so important about sports, how it can teach kids to deal with things. This year was just another hurdle you have to deal with. We’re dealing with kids here, it’s important that we teach them about the game of life as well as the game of football.”

  The Salamanca Warriors played inspired football in 1999. Each opponent reminded the players of the foe their inspiring coach fought each day. His courageous attitude, his hard work, and his understanding of a “God Job” required them to dig deep inside themselves to play up to their potential.

  When Coach Morton stood on the sidelines at the Carrier Dome and listened to his daughters sing the national anthem, his heart offered a hymn of gratitude for his life, his family, his team, and his challenges.

  Often it is not the end of a journey that is the reward. It is the journey itself that is the blessing.

  11

  Rick and Dick Hoyt

  The captain of the North Reading, Pennsylvania, high school football team married a cheerleader. Sounds like a little bit of the American dream, right? Well, Dick and Judy Hoyt lived a nightmare but persevered to ensure a happy ending.

  When their first child, Rick, was born in 1962, they hardly knew what to say or do when they were told he was a non-verbal quadriplegic. They were barely more than kids themselves, neither over twenty, and they’d just been told to institutionalize their son.

  “We felt like we were at the bottom of a black hole,” Judy says. “Someone had just put a cover over our dreams and snuffed them out.”

  The couple had known a different life, one of achievement and high standards. They wanted and expected more. So they rejected the doctor’s advice and sought counsel from the minister who had married them. He told them that they had another choice—“Keep Rick at home. Love him, take one day at a time, and see where it leads you. Who knows what will happen?”

  They took those words to heart, and that decision started an incredible series of events that demonstrate the power of love. Two young parents had a handicapped child, no rules or precedent to guide them, a society that tends to hide folk that don’t fit an acceptable standard, shattered dreams, and their future in front of them. When adversity is met with love, commitment, and determination, it brings out the best in us.

  When Judy and Dick drove away from the hospital after Rick’s birth, Dick cried, one of the few times that has ever happened. Their son needed constant attention. Judy was beside herself at times: “Sometimes I screamed, ‘I just can’t take care of this child!’ One day I was so angry I went into a closet and screamed and cried. There were times I hated Rick.”

  Some of their friends agreed with the doctor and thought they should put Rick in a home. Some thought he was retarded. Eight months into their parental challenge, Rick was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, and that, oddly enough, was good news. With each day that passed, it was becoming clear to Judy that Rick was not retarded. He could have a life, a real life, and his family would see to it that he did.

  Rob, who was born in 1964, and Russ, who was born in 1967, became involved in Rick’s care and instruction as they got older. Through the help of Children’s Hospital, Judy gradually exposed
Rick to the world of sensory perception. She played music, banged on pans, and rubbed his skin with different fabrics. She began teaching him the alphabet by using sandpaper letters glued to blocks. Judy was heartened when she realized that Rick had a sense of humor—he started laughing at her jokes.

  While these developments were encouraging, Dick struggled. He seemed to always have a reason to be out of the house. The lion’s share of the parenting was Judy’s.

  When Rick reached school age, the Hoyts faced new challenges but found new friends to help them through. Dr. William Crochetiere of Tufts University and Rick Foulds, a grad student, introduced them to Tufts Interactive Communicator. Through the use of a head switch, Rick could select letters from a panel. The Hoyts called it the Hope Machine. Through innovative fund-raising and the help of their neighbors, the Hoyts were able to bring the TIC home in 1972. They were about to “hear” Rick speak. The family couldn’t believe it when he tapped out his first words— “Go Bruins.” Boston was in the Stanley Cup finals and Rick was cheering them on. He smiled with delight.

  “It marked a time for people outside our family to realize that Rick was intelligent and that I was not just some crazy mother saying, ‘My kid is bright,’” Judy says.

  Because of Judy’s efforts, Rick was able to enter public school in 1975. When he reached his senior year at the age of nineteen, he wrote an essay titled, “What It Is Like to Be a Nonverbal Person.” In his writing, Rick let loose his feelings of anger and of being cheated, despite his family’s unceasing efforts.

  “I felt and knew I was different,” he wrote. “I understood all the things said to me. Being a nonverbal person does not make one any less of a human being. I have the same feelings as anyone else. I feel sadness, joy, hunger, love, compassion, and pain.”