It’s always nice when someone uses sports to send a positive message.
Gordie Howe skated well into his 50s and took many licks on the hockey ice, proving age is nothing but a number. Michael Jordan retired from basketball twice and came back strong each time, showing anything can be done when the heart and desire to do it are there. Greg Louganis slammed his head on the springboard at Seoul and, instead of trying to do less, stuck to his difficult game plan and captured the gold.
These pros have spent years amazing fans and teaching us some important lessons in life.
Glenn Fenster, 45, is reinforcing those lessons in a way that’s outside of his trade.
Soon, his messages on endurance and love will reach millions of Americans, when he completes his bike ride from Seattle to Miami to fight epilepsy, a chronic nervous disease his 12-year-old son Nyle battles.
So far, he’s reached the thousands of Washington and Eastern Oregon.
Fenster said something to Nyle after he suffered an epileptic seizure one day on a tennis court in greater Fort Lauderdale, Fla.: “No matter what the disability of the mind or body, anything can be accomplished.” He said it after Nyle got up on his own after the seizure.
Heard a message like that before? Fenster is proving it, to what appears to be the extreme, but he’s already been through extremes.
Along his ride, he’s fallen accidentally and been through a terrible incident during his training runs. He was beaten up in what he said police called a “gang initiation,” taking licks a lot worse than a hockey check and suffering broken ribs, a mangled finger, and staples to his head — a beating which left him on the ground for five minutes.
If you think the coast-to-coast ride is over, you’re wrong.
Fenster’s mind is still on the big trek.
He draws great strength from his son. Nyle’s four simple words — “I love you, Dad” — are Glenn’s daily fuel for going on with his ride. The man isn’t racing against time, and he doesn’t have to finish the ride by a particular day.
He doesn’t even have to finish — he’s proud of just starting his mission — but he wants to.
He says he’s put too much time — more than two years, to be exact — into training, only to quit.
And he’s already reached too many people, as well.
Any accident he may face down the road won’t be a road block to him, just a challenge.
He faces them every day as a rider and a father. As a tennis instructor, he shows athletes how to meet them.
As a cyclist of just more than two years, one can see many great athletes in him, the ones who made the impossible possible like Howe, Jordan and Louganis.
And the great people we’ll come to know in the future will show a lot of Fenster, finishing what was started, overcoming physical pain with the mind and body, and being inspired by love.
Nyle Fenster is a great kid, not just because he fights epilepsy and stays alive each day, but also because he keeps his father going on the long road not often taken.
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Ivy Murrell is the sports editor of the East Oregonian. E-mail him at imurrell@eastoregonian.com.
