Lewiston man refuses to give up

ORONO – Jon Hess understands the meaning of the Special Olympics.

He was born with a hole in the top of his head. Surgeries and physical therapy followed. His parents were told he wouldn’t live to be 15. And as a 3-year-old, he watched his brother get killed by a car after chasing a ball into the street.

He is not a man who easily puts up with others’ frustration, including his wife Bonnie’s bad day bowling at the 28th Maine Special Olympics.

“I keep saying you’ve got to keep trying and trying something,” Hess preached. “You’ve got to want to try. You’ve got to try, and have skill and if you try, that’s the best skill of all.

“It’s not the competing. It’s the trying. I get strength out of that. That energizes me.”

The doctors underestimated the burly Lewiston man’s strength. He is 30 years old. Married. Has a job at Brunswick Naval Station. Lives in an apartment with his wife Bonnie.

Two years ago, Hess competed as a weightlifter at the World Games in Connecticut.

There was a gold medal from the Lewiston Adult Cockroaches’ 400-meter senior relay win hanging from his thick neck Friday. And Hess was looking forward to Saturday’s weightlifting competition at the Beckett Family Track and Field Complex at the University of Maine.

“It’s what I’ve lived with. This is the only thing I have,” Hess said. “This right here is a memory for me. I’m making memories. I’m not just doing it for me, I’m doing it for my brother in his dying grave, too.”

It’s a meet full of survivors and overachievers who remember all of their Special Olympics feats.

There’s 71-year-old Marion Fringe of Norway. She remembers competing at the New York State Special Olympics. Those games were a week long and involved everything from swimming to basketball.

“I was in a lot of things,” Fringe announces proudly. “Those were the good old days.”

A petite woman clad in a purple South Oxford Country Special Olympics sweatshirt and her short gray hair tucked up under a brightly colored, Disney-themed cap, Fringe looks like a hip 50-something grandmother.

And she was making quick work of her competition Friday with a win in the 18th Division of the softball throw.

Her next conquest is Saturday’s 100-meter walk, which she won last year, along with a silver medal in the standing long jump and a bronze in the softball toss.

“You should see my whole box of medals. I took them to church this week to show them,” she said. “I got three last year. We’re going to try to get a frame to put them in.”

She could probably even give Will Sawyer a little competition.

Sawyer is a pentathlete. And a helper.

After 15 years of Special Olympics competition, Sawyer does double duty for Eagles Outreach of Brunswick: he helps get his teammates around the Orono campus, and he competes.

Sawyer remembers racing on the dirt track and when there were no visitors bleachers surrounding the track.

“[I’ve been racing] since I was 4 or 5,” Sawyer said. “I’m one of the old-timers around here.

“I’ve been doing it for so long, it’s like school: it’s natural.”

Let’s put it in simpler terms. When Sawyer, a tall 19-year-old with closely cut blond hair and sunglasses, showed up for the shot put, an official still recognized him and good-naturedly asked him what happened to his hair.

The Bowdoin man took up the pentathalon, which consists of the shot put, high jump, running long jump, 400- and 100-meter races, two years ago. So far, it looks pretty natural.

Going up against two competitors from Sacopee Valley, Sawyer easily came up with wins in the high jump and shot put.

“Usually I do the mile but that got old after a while,” he explained of the change. “I decided to do something new.”