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Propelled by Love, Brothers Pedal to Aid a Quest for a Cure
Daniel White and his son Joseph, who is diabetic, at the Bike Doctor of Waldorf. Below, White tests a bike before buying it. He and his four brothers will fly to Santa Rosa, Calif., on June 21 to pedal in the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation's Ride to Cure Diabetes. Joined by eight friends and extended family members, the group is on pace to raise more than $50,000.
(Photos By Mark Gail -- The Washington Post)
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Within minutes, Daniel climbed off a bike, rolled up Joseph's sleeve, disinfected his skin with alcohol and gave him an injection. Joseph's Type 1 diabetes was diagnosed last year. His pancreas cannot produce insulin, and he lives in constant danger of being rushed to the emergency room.
Daniel asked Joseph to eat 10 crackers, knowing each had about a gram of carbohydrates.
"So, can I have a LifeSaver?" Joseph asked.
Yes, his dad told him, having factored that into his calculation.
The brothers' perspective on Joseph's illness goes back to their upbringing in Clinton. Before they were born, their parents met as patients in Glenn Dale Hospital's tuberculosis sanitarium, which the D.C. government operated in Prince George's County.
Their father entered when he was 15. Doctors removed a lung and several ribs, discharging him when he was 19. Their mother, she used to joke, was the lucky one. She spent a year in Glenn Dale.
They raised their family in a five-bedroom home in Clinton. Anticipating a shortened life, their father pushed the children to grow up quickly -- not wanting, as Daniel White put it, to leave his wife with a bunch of punks. Their mother survived three bouts of breast cancer in the 1970s.
Living through it all led them to know other people going through similar challenges. To the kids, the question of "why us?" developed into "why not us?"
Eventually, the children's two grandmothers, who had lost their husbands when they were young, moved in with them. That meant a room for each grandmother, a room for the parents, a room for the five boys and a room for the two sisters.
Eventually, the oldest, Mike, got his own tiny room when their father refinished the basement, leaving his four brothers upstairs sleeping in adjacent bunk beds.
The brothers competed in just about everything. Who brushed their teeth the fastest, for example. Their father died in 1991, and their mother in 1998.
Two brothers went to college; three became police officers -- two state troopers and one U.S. Park Police officer. One has a son who is a trooper. Sister Kathy, a state trooper, also married a trooper.
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