[Vision2020] Trumpeting the Father of the Year

[Tom Hansen]

>From the "Life of Reilly" column by Rick Reilly from today's (October 13,
2006) Sports Illustrated -

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Trumpeting the Father of the Year
By Rick Reilly

Question: What has four wheels, four feet, two eyes and one horn?

Answer: Trumpet position number 7 in the Louisville marching band.

Meet Patrick Henry Hughes and his dad, Patrick John Hughes -- the only
two-person marching-band member in college football.

Patrick Henry, 18 -- born with a rare genetic disorder that left him without
eyes, and with arms and legs that won't straighten -- plays the trumpet from
his wheelchair. Patrick John, 45, pushes the wheelchair. You can watch them
roll during the halftime show at Cardinals home games. "I was a little
worried about the endurance factor at first," says band director Greg Byrne.
"Not Patrick's. His dad's."

You think it's easy pushing a 165-pound man, in full uniform, around a
spongy artificial-turf field, trying to keep up with 213 other band members
and get to your spot in the A in cards and the L in u of l, while not
getting slammed by the person marching behind you -- all on four hours'
sleep because you work the graveyard shift loading planes for UPS? You try
it.

"My job is just to get, say, to the 32 1/2-yard line at the exact right
time," says the older Patrick, who doesn't wear the band uniform. "Every now
and then I'll take a mellophone in the back, but mostly it's been a blast!"

"He hasn't dumped me yet," young Patrick says, grinning.

Dad also pushes his son to classes, sits with him and whispers anything
written on the blackboard. After band practice they go home and eat dinner,
then Dad goes to work at 11 p.m., gets off at 5 a.m., sleeps a little and
gets up at 11 for breakfast, classes and band. If this guy isn't Father of
the Year, I'm Liberace.

Patrick John and Patricia Hughes, a sales assistant in a brokerage firm,
have been going full-Patrick-ahead since he was born. "My wife and I were
sort of devastated at first," the father says. "I mean, we played by all the
rules. We worked hard. She didn't have any alcohol during the pregnancy. Why
us?" But then they started finding out why them. Dad, a violinist and
pianist, found that he could calm his baby boy by laying him on top of the
piano and tickling the ivories. By nine months young Patrick was tapping
keys on the piano, mimicking his dad in a listen-and-play exercise. By two
years old he was playing Sesame Street songs.

Now the kid's a killer pianist and a monster trumpet player. Even though
people have tried to stop him -- like the ones at a performing-arts school
in Louisville who discouraged the Hugheses from even applying -- he has done
nothing but succeed. Was all-state in band and chorus at Atherton High. Had
a 3.99 GPA. Sang a duet with Pam Tillis at the Grand Ole Opry. Played piano
at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Put out a CD of 23 songs.

So when he enrolled at the university, young Patrick asked to join the pep
band, which guaranteed a precious seat at Cardinals basketball games. But
director Byrne crossed him up. He asked him, "Why don't you join the
marching band?"

Next thing you know, the teenager and his father were at band summer camp --
12-hour days with only 90-minute breaks for lunch and dinner. Dad pushed
like crazy, and young Patrick played the theme from Superman while being
whirled around in his own giddy darkness.

It about killed Pop. "I was whipped," he says. So he took the chair to a
mechanic friend, who rigged it with bigger, wider wheels. That helped them
get through the triple Axel of marching-band maneuvers: the dreaded Diamond.
Two battalions of marchers come at each other in full stride, intersect,
reverse, then split apart again. To pull it off, Dad has to pop a wheelie,
spin the chair, try not to wipe out the entire wind section, then peel off
the other way. "It takes everything I've got to make sure I'm in step," the
older Patrick says. "If I don't get there quick enough, or cut quick enough,
I'm the lone cowboy out at the end of this thing. I don't want people to
remember us as the kid in the wheelchair whose dad couldn't keep up."

"I'm so jealous," says Byrne. "My father-son time with my dad is golf, twice
a year. Patrick gets to be with his dad all the time."

Don't you love pushy parents?

Life with this kid just keeps getting more fun. "We still say, Why us?" says
the father. "But now it's, Why us -- how'd we get so lucky?"

I asked young Patrick what he thought his dad looked like, this man who's
devoting his life to him. "Tall, skinny, muscular and bald," he said,
laughing.

Yeah, there are lots of ways to play Superman.

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Vandalville, Idaho


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Work like you don't need the money.
Love like you've never been hurt.
Dance like nobody's watching.

- Author Unknown
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