By Dan Marrin
Special to DNAinfo
UPPER WEST SIDE — It was just past 1 p.m. on a hot Sunday afternoon as Mitch Perl and his 11-year-old son, Aaron, slipped into their swimgear along the Hudson River at West 99th Street.
As a crowd of some 20 family and friends chanted “Perl men! Perl men! Perl men!” the pair crept over the rocks and into the river waters.
"Godspeed!" yelled Mitch, 54. "This one's for Jeffrey Witt!"
Then, with police cruisers and rescue kayakers besides them, the duo clad in matching suits and swimcaps sped off downriver for a mile-long swim down the Hudson as Aaron's friend, Ally Witt, 13, watched from ashore.
The swim — called "Mitzvah on the Hudson" — was Mitch and Aaron's gift to Ally, to help her raise funds for people with developmental disabilities as part of a service project for her bat mitzvah.
Ally was raising money for AHRC, a support group (formerly known as the Association for the Help of Retarded Children) that had helped her uncle, Jeffrey Witt, find housing, work and his wife of 16 years.
Mitch and Aaron had their own stories of beating the odds: Mitch became a triathlete at the age of 50 and Aaron overcame his own daunting disability of being born with one leg shorter than the other.
Aaron had been born with a shortened femur, and at the age of 6, he underwent leg-lengthening surgery that left him with a metal frame and pins inside in his leg for months. Every day for weeks, doctors turned screws on the pins in his legs, slowly pulling apart the bones.
"It was excruciating," his father, Mitch, said.
As Mitch turned 50 and watched his son struggling through his own disability, he said he began to appreciate his own health more and started working to take better care of his own body, leading to a passion for triathlons.
Soon, Aaron took an interest in joining his father. Once recuperated from surgery, Aaron began playing soccer in their town of Thornwood in Westchester, and at the age of 8, he decided to train for his first kids' triathlon. His mother, Susan, was surprised at the idea of Aaron being a triathlete, not just because of his previous history.
"[At 8 years old], if I told Aaron to go to his room to put on socks, he'd come back a minute later and ask me what it was he'd gone there for! How was he supposed to do this?" Susan said she wondered.
Nevertheless, Aaron went on to complete 13 kids' triathlons, along with several 5 mile-long swims with his father.
Earlier this year, the Perls' friend, Ally, approached them for ideas for an athletic event as a fundraiser for her bat mitzvah service project — in preparation for her ceremony.
Ally wanted to support her developmentally disabled uncle, and Mitch came up with the idea of the 1-mile swim on the Hudson, from West 99th to 79th streets, a route used regularly for New York triathlons.
"I'm a Native New Yorker, born and raised on the Upper West Side. I've swam the Hudson for years. It had to be here," Mitch said.
Within a few months, Ally and the Perls had raised more than $6,000 for the event, well over Ally's initial goal of $5,000.
The 200 million gallons of raw sewage that flowed into the Hudson River after a fire at Harlem's North River Wastewater Treatment Plant almost derailed their plans. But after NYC Swim, one of the city's largest swim groups, declared it was safe enough to hold their East River event on Saturday, Mitch decided it'd be okay for their swim.
"Believe me, nobody's more concerned about my son's health than me. The Hudson is at the cleanest it's been in 100 years," Mitch said.
With the current in their favor, Mitch and Aaron finished in record time, arriving at the 79th Street Boat Basin at 19 minutes and 40 seconds. After hosing each other down with water and peeling off their wetsuits, Mitch and Aaron enjoyed a benefit lunch of sliders and quesadillas thrown by the AHRC.
Both Mitch and Aaron will be back in the water soon: Mitch will be competing in the New York City triathlon next week, and Aaron will compete in his seventh triathlon of the year later this August.
As Mitch said, "We didn’t have to stop once in the water today, and nothing's going to stop us anytime soon."
