14
	HEROES AND INSPIRATIONS

A lot happened over the next few months to make me think about people who had either inspired me or looked after me, about people who were important in my life.

I think we overuse the word “hero” a lot. Being a good athlete, a good actor, or a good musician who happens to be in the public eye doesn’t make you a hero; it makes you someone who has achieved something in a very public world. I’ve always admired other athletes both in and out of my sport. When I started in swimming, I was a huge fan of Pablo Morales. He was the Olympic champion in the butterfly and he was very friendly with fans and people in the swimming world. Outside of swimming, how can you not be in awe of Michael Jordan? I don’t know that anyone has ever made people appreciate his sport more simply by playing it better than anyone else. Basketball just looks like a better game when he plays it. The last few years I’ve become a huge Ravens fan, and I love watching Ray Lewis put a big hit on somebody.

But a hero should be somebody who can lift up other people with his courage and dedication. I always think kids should have role models within their families, as I’ve been lucky enough to have with my mom. But actually, heroes don’t have to be family and they don’t have to be in the newspapers. They don’t even have to be older than you.

Sometime in the fall, the Hansens, a family from Timonium, Maryland, contacted Bob about their son Stevie. He swam for one of the local clubs and was seven at the time. In October, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor and was due to go to Johns Hopkins for a brain surgery called a craniotomy. I went over to the Hansens’ house on Halloween to meet Stevie. I brought him a flag, some T-shirts and a poster and shot some hoops with him in the Hansens’ driveway. Afterward, we talked about our favorite sports, favorite TV shows, and favorite junk food and it felt good to see him laugh. We also talked a lot about courage and not giving up. I could tell Stevie was worried about what was in front of him, even though I’m sure he didn’t understand all of it, but I was amazed at how strong he was. It was pretty neat being the older brother for a day and I really hoped I made a difference. Stevie’s surgery was on my mind that night and the next day at practice. How would I face that sort of thing if I had to? How bad is a bad day at the pool, if you really think about it?

Stevie was too weak to see anyone after his craniotomy, except for his family. I sent a basket of junk food and silver balloons over to the hospital.

Stevie improved somewhat over the next year, and the following summer, I sent him an e-mail saying I wanted to come and see him at one of his meets at Spring Lake, in Timonium. I went over sort of unannounced. I found Stevie at the place called the kiddie round out and gave him a hug. “Wow, you really showed up,” he said. And he proudly showed me the club’s bulletin board that had clippings about my progress. Stevie looked really good that day—strong, smiling, almost carefree. The more I talked to him, the more I forgot about his illness. I think he did, too. I heard one of his friends say, “Can you believe Michael Phelps came out to watch Stevie,” and that really made him smile. I walked him up to the starting blocks for his races and watched him swim the free, fly, and relay. At one point when Stevie was on the blocks, the P.A. announcer told the crowd, “We have a special guest today, Michael Phelps.” It was funny, because the kids who were already on the blocks turned around and started to clap. There is no place like home.

At some point I volunteered to swim a relay leg in a parents and coaches race. I didn’t have a suit with me, so I borrowed one from one of the coaches. I took off from the shallow end of the pool and had to make sure I didn’t dive in too deep. I posed for pictures after the race and Stevie’s little sister, Gracie, wanted me to sign her forehead, so I put my name down in a red sharpie.

Three weeks later, Stevie came to Meadowbrook to watch me practice and we stayed in touch during the year. Later that summer, Stevie was re-diagnosed with tumors on his spinal cord. In the fall of 2003, Stevie developed severe back pain and had to undergo steroid and morphine treatment before they could get him to the operating room for another surgery.

The Hansens took a radical approach to radiation therapy, based on the St. Jude Medical Center in Tennessee. Stevie underwent six months of chemotherapy with two weeks on and two weeks off at a time. He tolerated all the pain with amazing courage, but his white blood cell count was down and he got tired very easily. He could train for about 45 minutes at a time before his body hit a wall.

I can’t imagine how Stevie continued to swim through most of his treatments, but swimming was probably the best medicine he could have.

Before the 2004 Olympic Trials, I put a Roots hat and a basket of apparel in a duffel bag for Stevie. My mom gave Gracie and Mrs. Hansen a bag of 200 red, white and blue buttons with my name on them and Stevie handed them out to the other kids at an 8-and-under meet where he was the high-point scorer for his team. In 2004, the Timonium Recreation Council gave him its MVP award.

Say what you want about what makes a hero, but I can’t think of a bigger one than Stevie.

Jim Lears was the salt of the Earth. Miss Cathy’s husband and Erin’s father was like another member of the family. He was the treasurer of the NBAC and a very active parent. He began helping Whitney with her finances when she started earning a stipend from USA Swimming. Eventually he became Bob’s accountant and mine. Most of all, he was one of the nicest men I’ve ever met. He always had a way of making you feel like you were talking to someone who wanted good things to happen for you. He was also a picture of health. Mr. Jimmy never smoked or drank; he jogged regularly and even finished the Boston Marathon. One day in November, he came in from his daily jog, went downstairs to do laundry and never made it upstairs. At 55 he had passed away from a heart attack. We were devastated.

I don’t think Bob would have objected that day if I had asked for the afternoon off, but I tried to get through practice and was simply horrible. Bob felt it, too. He cut me all the slack I needed that afternoon and after shortening practice we sat and talked about Mr. Jimmy at the end of the day. Everybody at the pool knew him and loved him. Everybody was in shock.

We went to a viewing for Mr. Jimmy down the street from my home and I couldn’t bring myself to stay very long. There were pictures of him throughout the funeral home. I walked up to his casket for five seconds and then went outside with Hilary and lost it in the parking lot. I walked home and cried myself to sleep.

I didn’t know if there was anything I could do for Erin, except to try to be there for her. She’s so much like Mr. Jimmy: peppy, giggly, full of energy and sweet. She can’t go more than a few minutes without finding something to laugh about. A week after Mr. Jimmy’s death, I passed by a Cadillac dealership and borrowed a Jaguar from someone I knew who worked there. I went to Erin’s house and told her I had something special to show her. We got in the car, drove around and laughed about things that really didn’t matter. It was a good release and a means of healing for both of us.

My mom had a black Jetta that was always giving her problems and she kept saying she needed to get a new car. The problem was that Mom always wanted to make sure we were okay before she would think to do something for herself. I figured I would practically have to lift her up and place her in the front seat before she’d buy something like that for herself.

We went to a Mercedes Benz dealership in December 2003 and took one of their silver ML320s home for the weekend. She really liked the way it felt, but at $35,000, she felt it was just too expensive. I knew that was about twice as much as she was willing to spend, so I put the down payment on the car and after I finished swim practice on Christmas morning (yes, you read that correctly), I left the keys in her stocking and had the car waiting for her in the driveway. What followed was definitely one of those Mom moments. She inhaled with surprise, put her hand over her mouth and gave me a hug that almost squeezed my head off my shoulders. Then I told her, “You know, this is for everything you’ve done for me—all the car rides to practice and meets, all the food and Gatorade you’ve bought, all the encouragement, all the patience. There’s no way I could have done any of this without …” At that point she started smothering me with another hug and the words kind of got lost. The size of the gift was irrelevant; it was the fact that I had the chance to say thank you for so many things that seemed to slip by unnoticed. What would I have done without them? She’s done so much and asked for so little in return over the years. When Dad left, she poured her heart and her resources into her kids. I don’t acknowledge it all the time, but I had been looking forward to the day when I could do something like that for her. That was a great Christmas.