5 Band Together for Diabetes Bike-a-Thon, Inspired by a 6-Year-Old Boy's Plight
By Dan Morse
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 3, 2007
When Daniel White decided to ride in a 102-mile bike-a-thon to raise money for diabetes research, his four brothers quickly followed.
No surprise there. The five are close, having spent part of their childhood squeezed into the same bedroom. And they knew how diabetes afflicts Daniel's son Joseph, who must get at least six insulin shots a day.
Then came the first step in their bike-a-thon preparations: buying the bicycles. Before this project, only one of the brothers had any recent cycling experience.
"We need some rearview mirrors so we can see John," Mike White told a bicycle shop salesman earlier this spring, referring to his brother standing nearby.
All five had gone to the Bike Doctor of Waldorf. The Whites make an interesting mix: a St. Mary's County prosecutor (Daniel), two police officers (Jim and Tom), one retired police officer (Mike) and a founder of a marketing company (John). On June 21, all five plan to fly to Santa Rosa, Calif., 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.
Inside the bike store, Mike's rearview-mirror crack was the latest in decades of the brothers' running commentary on one another.
"How," John responded, turning to Mike, a retired state trooper who was standing next to current trooper Tom, "are you guys going to bring your doughnuts out to California?"
If there's one person who stops them in their tracks, it is Joseph. In the bike shop, the 6-year-old was sitting on a bench near his dad and uncles.
Amid the banter, he pulled out his glucose testing kit. As he does at least eight times a day, he pricked his finger, placed a strip on the blood bubble and called out his total.
"Daddy, it's 319," he said, knowing the level was high.
"Dan, it's 319," John quickly repeated.
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.
As the White children started raising their own families, much of the clan migrated from Prince George's to St. Mary's. All those police connections sometimes come up in Daniel's job as a St. Mary's County prosecutor.
"No conflict at all," Daniel once told a judge. "We would both like to see the defendant in jail for as long as possible."
Joseph, Daniel and Kelly White's second child, seemed healthy until he was 4. Then he started losing weight and constantly getting up in the middle of the night to drink water. One night, his parents woke to find Joseph leaning over a bathroom sink, funneling water from his open hands into his parched mouth.
Extreme thirst is a warning sign of juvenile diabetes, as the Whites would quickly learn in a specialist's office at Children's Hospital in Washington. With no cure for diabetes, Joseph's life expectancy had been cut by as many as 20 years.
Last year, when Daniel heard about the bike-a-thon, which is in five locations, he bought a mountain-style bike and quickly tried to get ready for a ride in Asheville, N.C.
After he wiped out on a practice run, he had to go into court with a big scar on his face, drawing the attention of Circuit Court Judge C. Clarke Raley. "I know Lance Armstrong," Daniel recalled Raley telling him, "and you're no Lance Armstrong."
In Ashville, Daniel finished in the last group, under falling rain. The ride coordinator told him he'd never seen a wider spread between desire and ability.
Inside their Leonardtown home, his parents adjusted to measuring out Joseph's meals and snacks. A McDonald's chicken nugget has 3 carbs, they learned, and a Chick-fil-A nugget has 1.5.
Their siblings help them, taking care of their children when they took Joseph to the hospital and taking turns looking after Joseph. They all noted how quickly he accepted things.
For the ride this year, Daniel vowed to be better prepared. With more time to prepare, his brothers quickly fell in line.
The brothers' competitiveness hasn't waned. When several of them gather for Thanksgiving, they stand on a scale before and after eating -- the winner being the one with most displacement.
On snow ski trips, the five still race to the bottom. In the summer, on lakes, they tie five inner tubes to the back of a boat and see who can stay on the longest, while the driver jerks the boat to try to knock them off.
Six years ago, Daniel's jaw collided with Mike's knee. The two cracks required his mouth to be wired shut until it healed. A lawyer who finally can't talk, his brothers told him.
As the bike-a-thon approaches, the five are at various levels of training. Some haven't gone on any single rides of more than 40 miles. On June 23, they all expect to make 102 miles, if only to avoid a year's worth of insults. (Their donations aren't contingent on them finishing all 102 miles.)
As for Joseph, based in part on how active his parents and uncles have been in the bike-a-thon, he recently was named the state's youth ambassador for the ride. On Thursday, he was introduced to both chambers of the Maryland General Assembly, with Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert) at one point placing him on top of his desk, to a loud ovation.
Back home, Joseph's private comments draw similar attention. Around Easter, while his father was giving him a shot, Joseph said he didn't like having diabetes.
"But there is a kid in my class who doesn't have any brothers or sisters," Joseph said, "and I'd rather have this."
For information about contributing to the Ride to Cure Diabetes, call 410-823-0073 or visithttp://www.jdrf.org.
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