It was Father’s Day 1978, and Doug Heir, a brawny 18-year-old, was working as a lifeguard at a pool in Fairfield, N.J. Suddenly he spotted a struggling child crying for help. Doug dived off the nine-foot lifeguard stand into the pool. The next thing he saw was a white flash as his head struck the concrete bottom.

The water turned red around him, and Dong felt he was drowning. Then he saw his brother, Brian, pulling him to the surface.

“Somebody’s in trouble over there,” Doug sputtered, blood gushing from his head.

“Don’t worry,” said Brian, in words his brother would never forget. “The kid was faking.”

Doug couldn’t move. A defensive tackle on his college football team, he was used to being hit hard. He was just stunned, he thought.

Brian and the other lifeguards lifted Doug from the water. Later, as paramedics from an ambulance unit hovered over him, Doug waited for feeling to return to his body. The minutes ticked by, yet his legs and hands remained numb. He was frightened.

A few miles away in North Caldwell, Leonard and Carol Heir’s preparations for a Father’s Day barbecue were interrupted by a telephone call from the pool manager. They arrived at Mountainside Hospital in Montclair just as their son, his head cradled in towels, was carried in on a stretcher. The prognosis came quickly: a broken neck, irreversible spinal damage. “He’s a quadriplegic,” said the doctor. “Doug has lost all use of his hands and legs.”

By now, Doug was in deep shock. It was decided to transfer him to Bellevue Hospital in New York City, where he could get the best care. At six the next morning, Doug went into surgery. For three hours, doctors at Bellevue rebuilt his shattered neck, taking bone from his hip.

In January 1979, six months after the accident, Doug moved home. The next day, he entered Ramapo College of New Jersey, a small school in Mahwah with excellent facilities for the handicapped. He plunged into his political-science studies, accumulating a straight-A average, and began swimming and lifting weights. Before long, the phys-ed instructor asked Doug, “Why don’t you enter a wheelchair competition?”

Doug said he wasn’t interested, but the teacher persisted. Finally Doug agreed to enter a race. On the day of the meet, as he sat at the starting line in his heavy, everyday wheelchair, Doug noticed that the other competitors had fancy, light racing chairs.

Then the starter’s gun went off, and Doug barreled down the course, pushing his wheels faster and faster. As the unwieldy chair gained speed, Doug lost control. His chair careened into an opponent, sending them both tumbling to the ground.

Doug was disqualified. But as friends helped him right his chair, his heart pounded with excitement. And a grin spread over his face. Discouraged? He was elated!

At the next meet, Doug concentrated on field events. His shot put was good enough to qualify him for the annual National Wheelchair Games, to be held on Father’s Day 1979.

Doug won a bronze medal in shot put that day. But more important, he met the world-champion wheelchair athlete, whose muscular chest and arms and powerful throws astonished Doug. “I’m going to beat that guy one day,” he vowed.

After that, his training began in earnest. Every day at 7 a .m. Leonard, Brian and Doug gathered in their back yard. First Brian and his father helped Doug stretch and warm up his arms. Then, while his father held the wheelchair and Brain coached, Doug put the shot and threw the discus and javelin. Afterward, he swam half a mile and worked out for two hours on a weight-training machine in his bedroom.

In time, his biceps bulged to 18 1/2 inches, and Doug was able to bench-press 400 pounds. Between classes at Ramapo, he traveled with the Jersey Wheelers wheelchair team and began cleaning up in local competitions. When he entered his second national games in 1980, he came away with silver medals in shot put, discus and pentathlon. The following year he won a gold in discus, plus silvers in shot put and javelin.

Even with success, Doug occasionally got discouraged. On winter mornings, the ground where he trained was snowy and frozen, the wind bitter. In summer, the heat and humidity seemed to cook him alive. As a result of his accident, Doug couldn’t perspire from his shoulders downward, and Brian had to spray him with water to ward off heat exhaustion.

Why am I trying so hard? Doug sometimes wondered. And then he would remember the long, helpless days in the hospital, the despair, and the support of his family. How could he let them down?

In1982, Doug won three gold medals at the World Games, and he graduated from Ramapo as a dean’s list scholar. That fall, he entered Rutgers School of Law in Camden, N.J. But he also had another goal: doing his best in the 1984 Paralympics, in Aylesbury, England.

On the morning of July 29, Doug took his place with other Paralympic athletes for his first event, the javelin competition. He noticed reporters crowding around a South African athlete who had just thrown the javelin.

“A world record!” someone said.

Doug’s heart fell. The record had been his.

He rolled to the throwing circle, took several deep breaths and glanced at his father. “You can do it!” Leonard Heir shouted.

Doug took a practice throw. Then, as he lifted the javelin and drew back his arm, the crowd grew still. With a supreme effort, he hurled the slim rod skyward, nearly catapulting himself from the chair. When the javelin plunged to earth, the crowd erupted in thunderous shouts. Doug had set yet another record!

Before the Paralympics were over, Doug had won not only the gold medal for javelin but also golds in discus and shot put, plus a silver in pentathlon. As he accepted his four medals, the American flag flying behind him, he had never been happier.

“If you look at life,” he told a reporter, “there are 10,000 things you can do. With a disability, maybe you can’t do 1,000 of them, but you’ve got to go for the other 9,000. You set your own limits.”