Those who die young are forever young. No one exemplifies that like the late Terry Fox.
The hero of the highway is enshrined in our minds as an eager 21 year old: strong, tanned, driven, determined; running for the coast with the hopes of a nation behind him. The Terry Fox we knew then was brave, gritty, and clearly paying a terrible cost for every forward stride.
Today it’s often an artist’s conception of the smiling Terry Fox we see, on the posters for the annual run that bears his name. He sure looks more at ease in his own myth than he did on Highway 17 in the summer of 1980, but perhaps that’s as it should be. When you consider the millions of dollars he raised, the millions more raised in his name every year, the incredible international participation in the Terry Fox Run, it’s easy to think of him running with joy. The pain that was his constant companion on that long hard road is gone now, after all.
But tweaking the image of the young Terry Fox is nothing, compared to imagining Terry Fox alive and well on this, his fiftieth birthday…
Imagine the leg he’d have today: Prosthetics have come so far, “blade runner” Oscar Pistorius narrowly missed qualifying for the Olympics. I’m sure Terry would get a kick out of that.
I bet the fifty-year-old Terry Fox would still be in fine shape – like his old wheelchair basketball buddy Rick Hansen – but I like to think he might have a slight paunch. Time catches up with us all.
At fifty, Terry would have done his time in the public eye, as if he hadn’t already as a youth. He’d surely be a notable speaker, perhaps a life coach, a professor, even a hard-working politician. He’d speak plainly and well, as he always did. He’d be confident and he’d think hard before saying anything, to make sure it was said truly.
Now picture the fifty-year-old Terry Fox’s face: balding perhaps, his famous curls reduced to a fringe; tanned with a little grey stubble around the chin, slightly heavier jowls and some decent furrows in his forehead.
The fifty-year-old Terry Fox would know from a lifetime’s experience how to handle the press. He’d have been expecting this day and its return of attention to him, rather than the cause he served. He’d deflect the kudos with grace. But supposing some eager reporter half his age caught him off guard? Say they mentioned his OPP escort and the difference that made. Or suppose asked him how he felt, knowing that today’s victims of the cancer that took his leg almost always survive….
When I picture Terry Fox at fifty, I’ve just got to imagine him grinning from ear to ear.
Run Terry Run!