A Dad's Diary by Clayton Frech - August 19th, 2021

This blog post originated from Clayton’s Frech’s personal Facebook page. He is chronicling his journey as a dad with his son that is headed to Tokyo.

A Busy Day

So today was our final day before leaving for tokyo. I had a zillion things to do and kept grinding from 730am on. Set-up the ATT calling plan, spoke to a journalist, picked up SD cards for the GoPro, did the bills, reviewed documents for the angel city team, found another donor for our warehouse concept (yeah!), and did multiple run throughs of all the checklists. I was driving myself crazy second guessing everything.

Ezra and team getting prepped for practice.

A Powerful Sendoff

So a little background on Ezra’s school. When he was born, Bahar and I were on a mission to learn from other amputees. We met with families of amputee children and also some young adult amputees. After a dozen or so of these interview, we realized something. The kids growing up in small towns had more confidence and were farther along their self acceptance journey that those from the big city. Strange right? Our theory was that, by surrounding a child with a community that knows and excepts him/her for who they are you give the child some breathing room. They don’t have to deal with having everyone point and stare at them… they don’t have to worry about meeting new people every time they step out the front door.

Thus, we only really looked at K-12 schools. We wanted a school where he could be a normal kid. A school where we trusted the administration would listen to us, collaborate, and help create an inclusive learning environment.

Ezra has been at the same school, Brentwood, his whole life. He trains there. He played every sport possible there. More importantly, he found community, friends. And teacher / mentors. It’s his home base.

And for his final workout today, the school wanted to surprise him. They got all the teachers and staff to come out (and some athletes and parents that happened to be around) and cheer for him when he showed up for his final practice. They were all masked and socially distant, and it was awesome!! It was a total surprise - he had no clue!!

Then his coach, Chiropractor, mom, and his elementary school PE coach stayed for his final session at Brentwood. It turned out to be a very emotional night, appreciating Brentwood, the track and the team behind him. I was bummed I missed it due to kid transportation duties, as it sounded really beautiful. Deep in his heart he truly understands the support (and sacrifice) his team has given him, propelling him to new heights… And he expressed himself to the crew that was there with him. Of course, nobody even had a charged cell phone to properly document the moment. Oh well!

Finally, he got home, had another great meal, and the started doing final packing and checking the checklists!!

We both ended up going to bed around 2am… We set my alarm for 4:30am, with a goal to be at the airport by 6am… just in case… man, would that be prescient!