join me it’s three o’clock in the
morning it is dark as dark can be I’m on
a deserted Beach called Vasant Bay it’s
in Normandy France I just I ended up on
the beach because I had just finished
swimming the English Channel there are
1800 some people in history who have
done that by comparison 5000 and some
have summited Mount Everest and 50,000
people have done an Ironman distance
triathlon this year the English Channel
is 21 miles straight across but nobody
can swim straight across because of
tides and currents our path took us
almost 30 miles the the the swim took us
about 14 and a half hours that was
roughly divided equally between this
infinity of darkness and being
brutalized by five-foot waves oh and it
was cold the water had been 62 degrees
the whole way which was good because
that’s about as warm as the English
channel gets but the real problem was
the air temperature after midnight it
had cooled way down and while I was
standing on the beach it was 47 degrees
I couldn’t see anything but I could sure
see my breath in front of me the you
would think that standing there dripping
wet in a speedo a swim cap and goggles
that I would feel all alone but nothing
could be further from the truth just 200
yards off the beach was a boat and the
boat had been my escort across the
English Channel obviously the whole way
and on that boat was my team and the
team was led by my wife Susan our kids
and a couple of friends who had devoted
themselves to this crazy idea in the
first place the I happened to be the
team mate who staggered up the beach but
this was really a success that everyone
shared and and I couldn’t wait to sort
of share it with them so then I had to
sort of suffer the final indignity
that every English Channel swimmer has
to and that is you have to get back in
the cold water and swim out to the boat
so I did and when I got to the boat
there were no brass bands or anything
like that there was a there was a warm
towel and some congratulatory hugs there
were a few tears but mostly just a
satisfied and relieved sense of everyone
on the team because we had accomplished
our goal now the as the boat then took
us back to Dover England where we had
started the kids were exhausted had been
a long night they found bunks on the
boat and just conked out Susan and I
after I warmed up a little bit were able
to enjoy the the best cup of hot tea
ever
I didn’t swim the English Channel just
to lose a few pounds I swam the English
Channel to raise money and awareness for
ALS which is also known as Lou Gehrig’s
disease we would have no idea of knowing
this but while we were having our cup of
tea on that boat even bigger news came
out that was the day that the ALS
researchers at Northwestern University
here in Chicago announced that they had
found the common cause of this disease
not the cure just the cause and they had
been looking just for that for years
imagine the same day we staggered up the
beach was the day they made this
announcement there were people who said
this was the biggest announcement in ALS
since Lou Gehrig himself had died 70
years earlier now my family has an
unfortunate relationship with ALS
started many years ago shortly after one
of our kids was born my father came to
us and told us that he had been
diagnosed with this disease he had had
some weird neurological symptoms for a
couple of years he was very candid about
it and he said look actuarially in three
to five years
I either suffocate or starve to death it
hit us like a ton of bricks we knew
nothing about ALS at the time we learned
quickly though which came in handy as
other members of our family have been
diagnosed since then als is a shipwreck
it’s a it’s a slow-motion ship
it is a neurodegenerative disease that
slowly robs the patient of their ability
to use their muscles
sadly my father’s characterization about
suffocating or starving to death was
pretty accurate the perhaps the worst
part of it is that there are no ALS
survivors so when you hear that news
whether it’s a patient or someone who
loves them it is there is it there goes
with that an overwhelming feeling of
powerlessness and that feeling of
powerlessness made us want to do
something we met with the researchers
the ALS researchers and learned very
quickly that we couldn’t help with their
science that are brilliant they’re doing
their for their fabulous job but the
other thing we learned from those
researchers was that the kid that the
path to the cure would be paved with
dollar bills and raising money is
something we could do so we set about to
do that in a creative way and what we
came up with was swimming and what we
what we what we figured was that
swimming was the perfect contrast with
ALS just as the ALS patient gradually
loses their ability to use their muscles
the swimmer has to use them all all the
time so we had a good we had a good
contrast with that swimming was also
logical because I’ve been a competitive
swimmer most of my life actually more
than 50 years I started as a seven year
old in a in a Park District summer
league team at a time not because I was
a good swimmer I couldn’t even swim the
length of a pool but because I have two
older sisters who were gifted swimmers
and really having a lot of fun so I
tagged along and I very quickly realized
that I love the competition and I loved
the team culture our town didn’t have an
indoor pool so the only way to swim
year-round was to go to a YMCA that was
several miles away by the time I got
through high school I was attractive to
exactly zero college recruiters and but
I still wanted to I still wanted to
compete I still wanted to be involved in
a team and so I was a walk-on
at for the men’s swimming team at the
University of Illinois in the mid-1970s
I had one goal and that was to make the
team not to be cut and after I achieved
that I was very fortunate I swam for
Illinois for four years and was honored
two of those years to be named most
valuable swimmer and my senior year I
was the team captain I had one other
goal while I swam at Illinois and that
was to be an all-american now in
swimming to be an all-american you have
to place in the top 16 places at the
NCAA meet at the end of the season I
fell short on that goal
I was 18th in the country as a senior in
college and the margin between 18th
place and all-american status was seven
one hundredths of a second
it’s hardly more than a blink of an eye
I carried that 7/100 of a second like
luggage for 33 years the good news is I
left that luggage on that same cold
beach in V Sante when I realized that
all 17 of those guys who beat me weren’t
there anymore but that was all pool
swimming and open water swimming is very
different so in open water swimming you
really don’t know where you’re going
yeah and it reintroduces all of the
variables that the pool takes away so
you’ve already heard about the cold in
the dark but there’s wind and there’s
waves and there’s wildlife now wildlife
imagine swimming through the living room
of the shark family or the jellyfish
family it you realize pretty quickly in
this sport you are not at the top of the
food chain so as we as we started to
talk about supporting ALS and trying to
use swimming and so forth I started to
do some some short open water swims the
lakes around here and and so forth and
had a lot of fun it was a good excuse to
stay training and I always loved that
part one thing led to another that did
the swims got a little longer they were
a little farther from home and we were
having a lot of fun one night Susan and
a couple of other couples and we were
together drinking wine and the subject
of the English Channel came up and the
more wine we drank the better it’s out
by the end of the evening we were
convinced that we were headed to we were
headed to England
well a day later a more important
conversation took place and that was
with Susan where I said look this the
English Channel stuff this is crazy
there this is huge undertaking I have no
idea how much how much training time is
going to take this could be a big
sacrifice to our family it’s not that
big of a deal to me if you think we
should pass then we’ll do something else
now Susan who is not a swimmer she does
have a unique ability though to make
crazy ideas come true said no if you
want to swim this and you think you can
you probably ought to go do it as for
the sacrifice to our family let’s turn
it around you’re gonna need a team we
have all these kids and we’ve got two
years to prepare we can figure this out
so without being a swimmer in one
thought she capsulated if she
encapsulated all of marathon swimming
it’s a team sport we had the team and we
could figure it out so that’s really
what this is about it’s this is all
about teamwork and it doesn’t matter if
you’re trying to swim the English
Channel or you’re trying to finish an
investment banking transaction or you’re
trying to find the the the cure for ALS
it’s a team sport and there are ways to
put together a team and lessons to be
learned from all of them that are
applicable to the other so we started to
we started to do our training and
building our team we called our little
team a long swim we borrowed the acronym
from ALS and and we were off to the
races now we’ve already talked a little
bit about the the English Channel swim
and we’ll talk some more but our little
team that started out being clueless and
newbies and so on is now among the most
experienced marathons
when teams in the world in addition to
the English Channel we’ve been 21 miles
across the Catalina channel in
California 24 miles the length of Tampa
Bay in Florida 29 miles the loop around
Manhattan Island in New York and last
summer we were a half a mile short of a
32-mile channel called the KETV channel
between molokai and oahu I’m telling you
this is one of the best teams in the
world in the process of doing all of
that we still had our goal of raising
money for ALS research and I will say
immodestly that we have been
extraordinarily successful at that to to
date we’ve raised more than four hundred
thousand dollars for this disease and
the pace of discovery is accelerating
all the time
it’s been very rewarding as we formed
our team we realized that there were
rules that we had to adhere to just like
you would in business or in in medical
research or anything else and in
marathon swimming the others pages and
pages of rules but they can all be sort
of distilled down to three big ones rule
number one is what you can wear as the
Brits call it your costume
it is a speedo a swim cap and goggles
anything that would make you warm fast
or buoyant is off-limits
so no wetsuits allowed rule number two
all swims begin and end on dry land so
this is an obscure sport admittedly but
if you can walk in swim across and walk
out that makes a good day in marathon
swimming rule number three every swim
needs to be escorted by a boat for
safety reasons obviously however the
swimmer may not touch the boat or
anybody on the boat and/or it’s an
immediate disqualification so when they
say unassisted they mean unassisted so
in light of those rules we started to
practice and train together learn from
each other and and so on and a couple of
illustrations about how that worked one
was
one evening at a team meeting we also
call it family dinner at our house my
son Billy was concerned about our
training process and it really had to do
with with how we were going through our
training at the time you know this was
at a point where I was logging a lot of
miles and the lakes around here and the
boys were escorting me in an old canoe
leftover from my folks in the 1960s and
Billy was worried about the canoe and he
said what we really need is a kayak
because it only takes one guy to paddle
it you’ll still be safe and at the end
of the swim it’ll be a lot easier to get
up on top of the car so I said all right
well you know where do we where should
we get a kayak he said we shouldn’t get
a kayak we should make a kayak he said
I’ve been doing the research he said in
the Internet you can see plans and kits
blueprints the whole show he said this
is totally something we can do right in
our own garage we’ll get everybody
involved he said it’ll be a lot of fun
we’ll spend the winter making a kayak so
for Christmas that year Billy got
blueprints and mahogany plywood and and
son of a gun if he didn’t do exactly
that he quarterback the whole process
this is our dirty garage and he
quarterback the whole process he roped
everybody into it his brothers and
sisters and I will cherish until I no
longer can cherish the hours that we
spent in the garage together now think
about it from a teamwork standpoint
though here was a teammate who had
identified a potential problem nothing
that had happened yet but a potential
problem and he had come up with a
solution he researched the solution and
then he pitched the solution to the rest
of the group and lo and behold this was
exactly the right answer and and and the
best part of it is that every time we
put this kayak in the water now it gets
oohs and ahhs every time we do because
it’s simply a beautiful boat another
attribute that a lot of teams look for
is endurance lately that’s been popular
to call it grit now
we loosely defined it is the willingness
of the team and the teammates to stay
enthusiastic as something goes haywire
everybody’s been part of a deal that
should be six weeks and goes to six
months
I won’t even start with you on the
number of years that the and that the
ALS researchers have to endure to make
it to their finish line but but
endurance and grit is critically
important
my son Gordie has grit he knows every
job on the boat he’s cross trained to do
everything his brothers call him the
Swiss Army knife of the crew but the
best best attribute about Gordie is he
does not get sick at sea
now we imagine being on this escort boat
it is dreadful it only moves as fast as
the swimmer and I can only swim two and
a half miles an hour so as the boat is
inching along its pitching back and
forth in big waves and then you mix in
something like diesel exhaust just for
sweetener in fact on our English Channel
swim during the first seven hours the
water was so rough that the crew
couldn’t even walk across the deck of
the of the of the boat because of the
water was so rough they had to crawl so
one by one all the crew members fell
away as they as they became more and
more sick which meant that Gordie picked
up more of the slack he just picked up
more of those jobs and as the as the day
turned into the darkest night ever the I
was a little wigged out swimming in
pitch black is a new experience and and
I could see that I could see the escort
boat but I couldn’t see anybody on the
escort boat just shapes and in people
moving around the one silhouette though
that I remember was Gordie as he stood
on that rail with his arms locked
watching me the entire time seven hours
in the pitch black and I don’t think
Gordie moved a muscle now your mind
begins to play tricks on you in the dark
like that and mine certainly did and I
would have these elaborate Congress
in my own head with Gordy while I was
swimming and each of those each of those
conversations ended the same way where
he would reassure me that he was going
to do everything that he could to make
sure that we made it to France and
whatever got in it got in our way he was
gonna take care of it
to make sure that he did his job and we
could achieve our goal well as you know
we made it to France we achieved our
goal and Gordy was the lock selection
for most valuable player on the a long
swim team for the English Channel swim
now every team needs to celebrate you
have a win you close a deal you have a
dinner even if it’s a beer party what
you really want to do is acknowledge and
recognize the people who maybe don’t get
their name in the paper or make the big
bonus but have had such a big impact and
such an important impact on the on the
success of the team for English Channel
swimmers there’s a perfect perfect
opportunity to celebrate and it’s at a
place called the white horse now the
white horse is a 700 year old pub in
Dover England and it is covered if it
invites channel swimmers to come and
write their names on the walls and the
ceilings and places to the point where
it’s just it’s covered with all these
signature and so we went to the white
horse we were on our way to the white
horse and I told the kids that you know
typically you really don’t want to have
your name written on the wall of a
tavern someplace but but in this case we
were gonna make an exception we got to
the white horse and and we’re really
overwhelmed here I think it was that’s
when the enormity of what we had done
started to sink in
you see these names of people you
respect so much icons in marathon
swimming and to imagine that we could
put our names up there with them so we
found an empty corner I was able to put
up all the names of our teammates and
our team and the day we swam and how
long it took us and I was able to put a
little star by Gordy’s name
as the most valuable player there it is
now after all that we had been through
and witnessing the shipwreck of ALS
building our team training some setbacks
a lot of good luck it was really
rewarding to be able to put that star up
there I also remember thinking about how
my father would have you dad where he
would have gotten a big kick out of it
first he would have had a big tall beer
in front of him if he had been at the
White Horse but I think he would have
had a big grin when he knew his grandson
had that that that star by his name now
I told you when my father had come to us
and had had told us that he’d been
diagnosed with ALS one of our one of our
kids had just been born well that was
Gordon so to come fast forward full
circle with that and now have that star
by Gordy’s name
I hope it’s there for another seven
hundred years I plan to swim for the
rest of my life I’ve been really lucky I
haven’t been injured we’re never gonna
run out of channels to swim but moreover
our team is going to keep swimming
our little a long swim team which is our
family our friends it’s our ALS
researchers that we support it’s 2,000
donors who have sent money in for this
disease we’re going to keep swimming –
and in that case it’s just going to be
one hand in front of the other until we
get to some far shore I don’t know where
that Shore is I don’t know when we’ll
get there but I know we’re not going to
stop until the person who greets us is
an als survivor thanks for joining
you
you
morning it is dark as dark can be I’m on
a deserted Beach called Vasant Bay it’s
in Normandy France I just I ended up on
the beach because I had just finished
swimming the English Channel there are
1800 some people in history who have
done that by comparison 5000 and some
have summited Mount Everest and 50,000
people have done an Ironman distance
triathlon this year the English Channel
is 21 miles straight across but nobody
can swim straight across because of
tides and currents our path took us
almost 30 miles the the the swim took us
about 14 and a half hours that was
roughly divided equally between this
infinity of darkness and being
brutalized by five-foot waves oh and it
was cold the water had been 62 degrees
the whole way which was good because
that’s about as warm as the English
channel gets but the real problem was
the air temperature after midnight it
had cooled way down and while I was
standing on the beach it was 47 degrees
I couldn’t see anything but I could sure
see my breath in front of me the you
would think that standing there dripping
wet in a speedo a swim cap and goggles
that I would feel all alone but nothing
could be further from the truth just 200
yards off the beach was a boat and the
boat had been my escort across the
English Channel obviously the whole way
and on that boat was my team and the
team was led by my wife Susan our kids
and a couple of friends who had devoted
themselves to this crazy idea in the
first place the I happened to be the
team mate who staggered up the beach but
this was really a success that everyone
shared and and I couldn’t wait to sort
of share it with them so then I had to
sort of suffer the final indignity
that every English Channel swimmer has
to and that is you have to get back in
the cold water and swim out to the boat
so I did and when I got to the boat
there were no brass bands or anything
like that there was a there was a warm
towel and some congratulatory hugs there
were a few tears but mostly just a
satisfied and relieved sense of everyone
on the team because we had accomplished
our goal now the as the boat then took
us back to Dover England where we had
started the kids were exhausted had been
a long night they found bunks on the
boat and just conked out Susan and I
after I warmed up a little bit were able
to enjoy the the best cup of hot tea
ever
I didn’t swim the English Channel just
to lose a few pounds I swam the English
Channel to raise money and awareness for
ALS which is also known as Lou Gehrig’s
disease we would have no idea of knowing
this but while we were having our cup of
tea on that boat even bigger news came
out that was the day that the ALS
researchers at Northwestern University
here in Chicago announced that they had
found the common cause of this disease
not the cure just the cause and they had
been looking just for that for years
imagine the same day we staggered up the
beach was the day they made this
announcement there were people who said
this was the biggest announcement in ALS
since Lou Gehrig himself had died 70
years earlier now my family has an
unfortunate relationship with ALS
started many years ago shortly after one
of our kids was born my father came to
us and told us that he had been
diagnosed with this disease he had had
some weird neurological symptoms for a
couple of years he was very candid about
it and he said look actuarially in three
to five years
I either suffocate or starve to death it
hit us like a ton of bricks we knew
nothing about ALS at the time we learned
quickly though which came in handy as
other members of our family have been
diagnosed since then als is a shipwreck
it’s a it’s a slow-motion ship
it is a neurodegenerative disease that
slowly robs the patient of their ability
to use their muscles
sadly my father’s characterization about
suffocating or starving to death was
pretty accurate the perhaps the worst
part of it is that there are no ALS
survivors so when you hear that news
whether it’s a patient or someone who
loves them it is there is it there goes
with that an overwhelming feeling of
powerlessness and that feeling of
powerlessness made us want to do
something we met with the researchers
the ALS researchers and learned very
quickly that we couldn’t help with their
science that are brilliant they’re doing
their for their fabulous job but the
other thing we learned from those
researchers was that the kid that the
path to the cure would be paved with
dollar bills and raising money is
something we could do so we set about to
do that in a creative way and what we
came up with was swimming and what we
what we what we figured was that
swimming was the perfect contrast with
ALS just as the ALS patient gradually
loses their ability to use their muscles
the swimmer has to use them all all the
time so we had a good we had a good
contrast with that swimming was also
logical because I’ve been a competitive
swimmer most of my life actually more
than 50 years I started as a seven year
old in a in a Park District summer
league team at a time not because I was
a good swimmer I couldn’t even swim the
length of a pool but because I have two
older sisters who were gifted swimmers
and really having a lot of fun so I
tagged along and I very quickly realized
that I love the competition and I loved
the team culture our town didn’t have an
indoor pool so the only way to swim
year-round was to go to a YMCA that was
several miles away by the time I got
through high school I was attractive to
exactly zero college recruiters and but
I still wanted to I still wanted to
compete I still wanted to be involved in
a team and so I was a walk-on
at for the men’s swimming team at the
University of Illinois in the mid-1970s
I had one goal and that was to make the
team not to be cut and after I achieved
that I was very fortunate I swam for
Illinois for four years and was honored
two of those years to be named most
valuable swimmer and my senior year I
was the team captain I had one other
goal while I swam at Illinois and that
was to be an all-american now in
swimming to be an all-american you have
to place in the top 16 places at the
NCAA meet at the end of the season I
fell short on that goal
I was 18th in the country as a senior in
college and the margin between 18th
place and all-american status was seven
one hundredths of a second
it’s hardly more than a blink of an eye
I carried that 7/100 of a second like
luggage for 33 years the good news is I
left that luggage on that same cold
beach in V Sante when I realized that
all 17 of those guys who beat me weren’t
there anymore but that was all pool
swimming and open water swimming is very
different so in open water swimming you
really don’t know where you’re going
yeah and it reintroduces all of the
variables that the pool takes away so
you’ve already heard about the cold in
the dark but there’s wind and there’s
waves and there’s wildlife now wildlife
imagine swimming through the living room
of the shark family or the jellyfish
family it you realize pretty quickly in
this sport you are not at the top of the
food chain so as we as we started to
talk about supporting ALS and trying to
use swimming and so forth I started to
do some some short open water swims the
lakes around here and and so forth and
had a lot of fun it was a good excuse to
stay training and I always loved that
part one thing led to another that did
the swims got a little longer they were
a little farther from home and we were
having a lot of fun one night Susan and
a couple of other couples and we were
together drinking wine and the subject
of the English Channel came up and the
more wine we drank the better it’s out
by the end of the evening we were
convinced that we were headed to we were
headed to England
well a day later a more important
conversation took place and that was
with Susan where I said look this the
English Channel stuff this is crazy
there this is huge undertaking I have no
idea how much how much training time is
going to take this could be a big
sacrifice to our family it’s not that
big of a deal to me if you think we
should pass then we’ll do something else
now Susan who is not a swimmer she does
have a unique ability though to make
crazy ideas come true said no if you
want to swim this and you think you can
you probably ought to go do it as for
the sacrifice to our family let’s turn
it around you’re gonna need a team we
have all these kids and we’ve got two
years to prepare we can figure this out
so without being a swimmer in one
thought she capsulated if she
encapsulated all of marathon swimming
it’s a team sport we had the team and we
could figure it out so that’s really
what this is about it’s this is all
about teamwork and it doesn’t matter if
you’re trying to swim the English
Channel or you’re trying to finish an
investment banking transaction or you’re
trying to find the the the cure for ALS
it’s a team sport and there are ways to
put together a team and lessons to be
learned from all of them that are
applicable to the other so we started to
we started to do our training and
building our team we called our little
team a long swim we borrowed the acronym
from ALS and and we were off to the
races now we’ve already talked a little
bit about the the English Channel swim
and we’ll talk some more but our little
team that started out being clueless and
newbies and so on is now among the most
experienced marathons
when teams in the world in addition to
the English Channel we’ve been 21 miles
across the Catalina channel in
California 24 miles the length of Tampa
Bay in Florida 29 miles the loop around
Manhattan Island in New York and last
summer we were a half a mile short of a
32-mile channel called the KETV channel
between molokai and oahu I’m telling you
this is one of the best teams in the
world in the process of doing all of
that we still had our goal of raising
money for ALS research and I will say
immodestly that we have been
extraordinarily successful at that to to
date we’ve raised more than four hundred
thousand dollars for this disease and
the pace of discovery is accelerating
all the time
it’s been very rewarding as we formed
our team we realized that there were
rules that we had to adhere to just like
you would in business or in in medical
research or anything else and in
marathon swimming the others pages and
pages of rules but they can all be sort
of distilled down to three big ones rule
number one is what you can wear as the
Brits call it your costume
it is a speedo a swim cap and goggles
anything that would make you warm fast
or buoyant is off-limits
so no wetsuits allowed rule number two
all swims begin and end on dry land so
this is an obscure sport admittedly but
if you can walk in swim across and walk
out that makes a good day in marathon
swimming rule number three every swim
needs to be escorted by a boat for
safety reasons obviously however the
swimmer may not touch the boat or
anybody on the boat and/or it’s an
immediate disqualification so when they
say unassisted they mean unassisted so
in light of those rules we started to
practice and train together learn from
each other and and so on and a couple of
illustrations about how that worked one
was
one evening at a team meeting we also
call it family dinner at our house my
son Billy was concerned about our
training process and it really had to do
with with how we were going through our
training at the time you know this was
at a point where I was logging a lot of
miles and the lakes around here and the
boys were escorting me in an old canoe
leftover from my folks in the 1960s and
Billy was worried about the canoe and he
said what we really need is a kayak
because it only takes one guy to paddle
it you’ll still be safe and at the end
of the swim it’ll be a lot easier to get
up on top of the car so I said all right
well you know where do we where should
we get a kayak he said we shouldn’t get
a kayak we should make a kayak he said
I’ve been doing the research he said in
the Internet you can see plans and kits
blueprints the whole show he said this
is totally something we can do right in
our own garage we’ll get everybody
involved he said it’ll be a lot of fun
we’ll spend the winter making a kayak so
for Christmas that year Billy got
blueprints and mahogany plywood and and
son of a gun if he didn’t do exactly
that he quarterback the whole process
this is our dirty garage and he
quarterback the whole process he roped
everybody into it his brothers and
sisters and I will cherish until I no
longer can cherish the hours that we
spent in the garage together now think
about it from a teamwork standpoint
though here was a teammate who had
identified a potential problem nothing
that had happened yet but a potential
problem and he had come up with a
solution he researched the solution and
then he pitched the solution to the rest
of the group and lo and behold this was
exactly the right answer and and and the
best part of it is that every time we
put this kayak in the water now it gets
oohs and ahhs every time we do because
it’s simply a beautiful boat another
attribute that a lot of teams look for
is endurance lately that’s been popular
to call it grit now
we loosely defined it is the willingness
of the team and the teammates to stay
enthusiastic as something goes haywire
everybody’s been part of a deal that
should be six weeks and goes to six
months
I won’t even start with you on the
number of years that the and that the
ALS researchers have to endure to make
it to their finish line but but
endurance and grit is critically
important
my son Gordie has grit he knows every
job on the boat he’s cross trained to do
everything his brothers call him the
Swiss Army knife of the crew but the
best best attribute about Gordie is he
does not get sick at sea
now we imagine being on this escort boat
it is dreadful it only moves as fast as
the swimmer and I can only swim two and
a half miles an hour so as the boat is
inching along its pitching back and
forth in big waves and then you mix in
something like diesel exhaust just for
sweetener in fact on our English Channel
swim during the first seven hours the
water was so rough that the crew
couldn’t even walk across the deck of
the of the of the boat because of the
water was so rough they had to crawl so
one by one all the crew members fell
away as they as they became more and
more sick which meant that Gordie picked
up more of the slack he just picked up
more of those jobs and as the as the day
turned into the darkest night ever the I
was a little wigged out swimming in
pitch black is a new experience and and
I could see that I could see the escort
boat but I couldn’t see anybody on the
escort boat just shapes and in people
moving around the one silhouette though
that I remember was Gordie as he stood
on that rail with his arms locked
watching me the entire time seven hours
in the pitch black and I don’t think
Gordie moved a muscle now your mind
begins to play tricks on you in the dark
like that and mine certainly did and I
would have these elaborate Congress
in my own head with Gordy while I was
swimming and each of those each of those
conversations ended the same way where
he would reassure me that he was going
to do everything that he could to make
sure that we made it to France and
whatever got in it got in our way he was
gonna take care of it
to make sure that he did his job and we
could achieve our goal well as you know
we made it to France we achieved our
goal and Gordy was the lock selection
for most valuable player on the a long
swim team for the English Channel swim
now every team needs to celebrate you
have a win you close a deal you have a
dinner even if it’s a beer party what
you really want to do is acknowledge and
recognize the people who maybe don’t get
their name in the paper or make the big
bonus but have had such a big impact and
such an important impact on the on the
success of the team for English Channel
swimmers there’s a perfect perfect
opportunity to celebrate and it’s at a
place called the white horse now the
white horse is a 700 year old pub in
Dover England and it is covered if it
invites channel swimmers to come and
write their names on the walls and the
ceilings and places to the point where
it’s just it’s covered with all these
signature and so we went to the white
horse we were on our way to the white
horse and I told the kids that you know
typically you really don’t want to have
your name written on the wall of a
tavern someplace but but in this case we
were gonna make an exception we got to
the white horse and and we’re really
overwhelmed here I think it was that’s
when the enormity of what we had done
started to sink in
you see these names of people you
respect so much icons in marathon
swimming and to imagine that we could
put our names up there with them so we
found an empty corner I was able to put
up all the names of our teammates and
our team and the day we swam and how
long it took us and I was able to put a
little star by Gordy’s name
as the most valuable player there it is
now after all that we had been through
and witnessing the shipwreck of ALS
building our team training some setbacks
a lot of good luck it was really
rewarding to be able to put that star up
there I also remember thinking about how
my father would have you dad where he
would have gotten a big kick out of it
first he would have had a big tall beer
in front of him if he had been at the
White Horse but I think he would have
had a big grin when he knew his grandson
had that that that star by his name now
I told you when my father had come to us
and had had told us that he’d been
diagnosed with ALS one of our one of our
kids had just been born well that was
Gordon so to come fast forward full
circle with that and now have that star
by Gordy’s name
I hope it’s there for another seven
hundred years I plan to swim for the
rest of my life I’ve been really lucky I
haven’t been injured we’re never gonna
run out of channels to swim but moreover
our team is going to keep swimming
our little a long swim team which is our
family our friends it’s our ALS
researchers that we support it’s 2,000
donors who have sent money in for this
disease we’re going to keep swimming –
and in that case it’s just going to be
one hand in front of the other until we
get to some far shore I don’t know where
that Shore is I don’t know when we’ll
get there but I know we’re not going to
stop until the person who greets us is
an als survivor thanks for joining
you
you
Please follow and like us: