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Friday, August 20

A father's love knows no limits

ATHENS, Greece - The leukemia is back. And the kidney failure means dialysis every other day. David Williams should be home in Pennsylvania, but what do you do when your little girl's an Olympian, and your heart says go while your body says stay?

``It's a challenge to be here,'' he said, sitting in a McDonald's down the path from the stadium where his daughter, Lauryn, is running the 100-meter dash, resting from the Greece heat and sun that quickly drains everyone, let alone a cancer victim told 15 years ago he had three years to live.

``But this is for Lauryn, this is not about me. I'm here to see my daughter run. And nothing is going to stop me.''

On his left arm was a ghastly 6-inch welt, the result of eight needles put into him this week at a Greek hospital, where they tried to give him a dialysis treatment that as of Friday morning had not quite worked.

``If I don't get a treatment between now and Saturday, I'll be sick,'' he said. ``I am sure they're dong the best they can. So far it hasn't been good enough.''

His daughter's picture is on his T-shirt, and a gold cross hangs from his neck. A father will do anything to share a moment like this with his daughter. Take any risk, endure any pain.

Consider the maddening irony, then, that when Lauryn entered the starting blocks for the first Olympic event of her life Friday morning, her father was stuck outside at the gate. He had come thousands of miles, endured needles in his arm. And he never saw the race.

There are seven family members here, one his ex-wife and Lauryn's mother, with whom he is friendly, and the two missed connections on tickets.

So he was outside looking in when his daughter's heat went off. I gave the first play-by-play account of my life over the cell phone to him. Good start ... looking strong ... easy victory.

``She won! She won!'' David Williams announced to his family. His daughter had advanced to the second round Friday night.

``I will be there,'' he said. ``I have the ticket in my hand.''

Later, he recounted his long road here. The leukemia diagnosed in 1989, the new drug that has fought it off, the kidney failure that came four years ago. A 51-year-old Vietnam veteran, a former General Motors worker, he now is a minister outside of Pittsburgh.

``God says He'll never give you more than you can handle,'' Williams said. ``He must have had a hard time getting my attention.

`'I threw in the towel. He threw it back.''

Then there's his daughter, one of five children, whom he thinks about when they slide the needle in his arm in Athens, and he looks up at strangers and hopes this time it works.

``What I think,'' he said, ``is she gives me a reason for living.''

There was a time he thought money, not cancer, would keep him from coming here. A fund raiser at a car show netted all of $54. His Sunday sermon that week was about love, and if God wanted David Williams to be in Greece, David Williams would somehow get there.

Next day, a businessman donated $10,000.

So he's in Athens, knowing that when he watches his daughter run, nothing else will matter.

``I would liken it to a person dropping out of a plane, which I did,'' he said. ``I don't think anyone knows the feeling of hanging in the sky, nothing encumbering you, just free. That's how I feel when I see Lauryn run.''

POSTSCRIPT: David Williams had another dialysis treatment Friday afternoon, making sure he was done in time to get to the track by 8:50 p.m., when his daughter ran.

Except he had the time wrong. She raced at 8:18 p.m. He was still on a subway train when she won. Another cell phone play-by-play.

``I guess God does not want me to watch her run,'' he said.

Saturday, she might win the gold. David Williams said he's coming early.

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