5/4/99

What made Terry Fox run?

    The night before doctors amputated a leg off Terry Fox, the athletic Canadian teenager knew what he would later do: get up. Get up and learn to walk again, then learn to run.
    And he did. He ran an epic run and became a legend, Canada's patron saint of courage.
    On Friday, Israelis will run, jog or walk a seven kilometer route in Tel Aviv's Park Hayarkon, perpetuating the memory of Terry's journey -- and raising funds for cancer research.
    The Terry Fox Run has become a worldwide phenomenon. A million participants in 53 countries have raised more than $14 million (Canadian) between 1992 and 1997. It has also served to popularize the Terry Fox story beyond Canada.
    He lost his leg to bone cancer in 1977, at the age of 18. While still unable to get out of bed, he envisioned a cross-country run, which in Israel might take half an hour in pleasant sunshine, but Canada is 8,000 kilometers across, and the weather can be brutal.
    After 18 months and 5,000 km of agonizing training, he was ready.
    On April 12, 1980, he dipped his mechanical leg in the Atlantic Ocean, and took his first steps toward the Pacific.
    Every step was grueling. The prosthesis pounded his stump unrelentingly, and his expressive face showed the pain. The pace was arduous: he hopped and loped along highway pavement. Yet amazingly, he ran an average of a marathon every day -- 42 kilometers -- despite punishing conditions: bitter cold, freezing rain, high winds, blistering heat and humidity.
    His Marathon of Hope attracted media attention at first, but soon lost its newsworthiness, and for a while, little mention was made of it. At first, Terry stopped in villages, towns and cities he passed to ask for donations for cancer research.
    But as he persevered along the Trans-Canada Highway, his journey became less a news item, and developed into a source of daily national fascination and pride. The country began to realize this was a legend in the making, and it became a front-page story every day in every newspaper.
    No longer did Terry have to introduce himself. Townspeople came to him. Wherever he was, a vacation day was proclaimed so that residents could encourage him along the route, run with him, donate to his cause.  
    He set out each morning at 4:30, and often was joined by hundreds and thousands of adoring supporters -- inevitably followed by highway traffic slowed to a crawl, not that anyone complained.
    In a country of 23 million, he collected $25 million.
    Nearly halfway across Canada, at Thunder Bay, Ontario – having hopped and loped for 5,373 km in 143 days -- the story suddenly took a dramatic turn: cancer had overtaken his lungs. The Marathon of Hope ended.
    A nation held vigil at his bedside, praying for the young man from Port Coquitlam, British Columbia. He had become every Canadian's brother or son, and the country waited and hoped.
    Terry Fox died 10 months later, in June 1981.
    The tributes were unprecedented. What other 22-year-old ever contributed so much to society to have a mountain named after him?
    Everywhere in Canada, parks and roads bear his name. (His mother came to Jerusalem in 1984 to inaugurate Terry Fox Garden in Liberty Bell Park.) Waiving interval rules, Canada Post issued a stamp soon after his death, and the government bestowed its highest medal of honor on him.
    The Marathon of Hope did continue, as Canadian schoolchildren completed the kilometers Terry could not. It is now a global tradition, in such events as Friday's in Tel Aviv, "In the Footsteps of Terry Fox."
    The world's largest single-day fundraiser for cancer research, the Terry Fox Run gets people going. Dogsled teams have participated in Canberra, in Germany there was a special run for "Foxlets" six years old and under. They've slogged through floods in Saudi Arabia, soldiers did it as part of their training in Bosnia, and 3,000 Lebanese ran through the rubble of Beirut. The "run" has been done in sailboats, wheelchairs, baby strollers, bicycles, by the strong and the weak: even children with cancer have been able to help their own cause.
    And that's another part of Terry's legacy: in his lifetime and after, he has inspired people to overcome adversity. At the time of his run, I knew an elderly woman who had also lost a leg. Nobody was able to coax her out of her chair, until she read about the Marathon of Hope. "If he can do it," she said grittily, "so can I." And up she got.
    "I guess one of the most important things I've learned is that nothing is ever completely bad. Even cancer," Terry Fox said in 1980. "It has made me a better person. It has given me courage and a sense of purpose I never had before.
    "But you don't have to do like I did -- wait until you lose a leg or get some awful disease -- before you take the time to find out what kind of stuff you're really made of. You can start now. Anybody can."
    Of Terry Fox it can rightfully be said, he was a hero.