Every great runner needs a statue.

he ancient Greeks showed their love and loyalty to their gods, heroes, and | ste by immortalizing them with statues. Their aim was to show men

moving, striding, leaping, and running as the gods themselves might move. Alexander Eliot, a noted art critic and sportsman, stated that: “The sculptures of Greece more than any other art form are the pure expression of freedom, self-consciousness and self-determination.” He goes on to say: “The statue was intended not only as an object of worship but also as an inspiration to men. The god resembles a man, who resembles a god. Here dissolves the difference of power in everything that separates men from the gods.”

Since the ancient Greeks, athletes have been striving for that perfection, and a few reach that pinnacle whether it be winning an Olympic gold medal or having a statue sculpted in their likeness. As the Greek poet Pindar wrote in a victory ode: “Single is the race, single of men and of gods; from a single mother we both draw breath. But a difference in power keeps us apart . . . Yet we can in greatness of mind or of body be like the immortals.”

John J. Kelley

Iam sure that two-time Olympian John J. Kelley, who died in 2011, would have been immortalized in statue by the Greeks. Kelley set himself apart from mere mortal runners by his constant striving to win against adversity time after time. Winner of the 1957 Boston Marathon and eight consecutive national marathon championships and consummate Renaissance man, Kelley would be thrilled that I quoted Pindar.

He might not be so thrilled that a statue in his likeness, along with his beloved dog Brutus (another nod to the Greeks), was unveiled this summer in his hometown of Mystic, Connecticut. Amby Burfoot, winner of the 1968 Boston Marathon, who was a student of Kelley’s at Fitch High School and one of his star track team members, was on the committee to get the statue commissioned. “Tf John were alive, he would scoff at a statue and probably make some remark about ‘graven images.’ Nonetheless, I can’t wait to see the statue,” Burfoot said

The statue of John J. Kelley and his dog,
Brutus, in Mystic, Connecticut.

in anticipation of the unveiling. “I take great delight in this ironic positioning of a John Kelley statue. All of us in and around Mystic are very excited by this honor to Kel. Nothing made John happier than to be out and about in Mystic with his dog.”

Kelley’s daughter, Eileen Edwards, speaking for the family, added: “Dad would say he wasn’t worthy of such an honor and name others, such as Thoreau, Emerson, Shakespeare, Walt Whitman,

Bob Dylan, and his wife, Jacintha, who

put up with him through 50 years of marriage, who were more deserving, but we ] are thrilled at the recognition for Dad.” ;

The unveiling of Kelley’s statue got me started on a journey to discover other commemorations to great runners. Where are they and of whom?

In Massachusetts, Bill Rodgers, four-time winner of Boston and New York City marathons, has a bronze plaque of his running shoes in Boston’s Faneuil Hall. “It’s a rare thing to get recognition in our sport as we are considered a ‘niche’ sport in the United States, so I appreciate it,” says Rodgers, who is also in the Wesleyan College Hall of Fame and the USATF Hall of Fame, and was inducted in the first class of the National Distance Running Hall of Fame in Utica, New York. He also has a commemorative statue in Davenport, Iowa, along with Joan Benoit Samuelson (are you as surprised at that as I was?), but we’ ll get to that later.

© Lisa Brownell

John A. Kelley

The Boston Marathon course has two statues on the same base, both of Johnny A. Kelley. The statue, unveiled in April 1993 and called the “Marathon Man,” is near the base of Heartbreak Hill. It commemorates Kelley “The Older,” who ran 61 Boston Marathons before his death in 2004 at age 97. Kelley won the Boston Marathon in 1935 and 1945 and represented the United States at the Summer Olympics in 1936 and 1948. The two statues depict Kelley at age 27 after he won his first Boston Marathon and the older Kelley when he ran his last Boston Marathon at 84.

ORT. Seeley

<4 The statue of John A. Kelley on the Boston Marathon course.

The Hoyts

There is another statue on the course, at the start area in Hopkinton. In 2013 the B.A.A. honored Dick and Rick Hoyt with a life-sized bronze statue of them, commissioned by John Hancock, a longtime sponsor of the marathon. The statue, on the lawn of Center School just yards from the starting line of the marathon, shows Dick pushing Rick in his wheelchair. The image of Dick pushing his son, Rick, who is a quadriplegic and has cerebral palsy, has become synonymous with the Boston Marathon.

In Maine, Joan Benoit Samuelson has a statue in her hometown of Cape Elizabeth, near her high school and the starting line of the TD Beach to Beacon race she founded in 1998. In an interview with Samuelson by Kenny Moore in 2008, while riding in her car to the prerace pasta party for the race committee, they passed the bronze statue that depicts her carrying the US flag after her 1984 Olympic victory and she commented: “This is why people ask if I’m dead.”

Fred Lebow

Moving down the coast to New York, Fred Lebow, instrumental in starting the New York City Marathon, is honored with a statue in Central Park. The statue, a life-sized bronze image of Fred in his signature bicycle cap and running suit, looking down at his stop watch, is positioned right inside the park on East Drive at 90th Street off Fifth Avenue. It was unveiled November 4, 1994, in a ceremony at a different location, near the marathon’s finish line at West Drive and 67th Street in Central Park. Many New York City Marathon winners were on hand to honor Fred, among them Bill Rodgers and Alberto Salazar. On November 1, 2001, the sculpture was reinstalled on a black granite pedestal at its current location. For the marathon each year, the statue returns to a spot within view of the finish line.

The Fred Lebow statue in New York City
captures him in a familiar pose—checking
his stopwatch.

The journey from the east side of the park to the west side is part sentimental and part a requirement of the statue’s existence. When Lebow died from brain cancer in 1994, there was a moratorium on new monuments in Central Park. The campaign to get his statue was spearheaded by the New York Road Runners and thousands of runners. Even politicians agreed with it as Lebow transformed the New York City Marathon from a Central Park club race with just 127 entrants in 1970 into an internationally recognized event drawing 2.5 million spectators who bring in mega-revenues to the city’s coffers. So his statue was declared temporary. Under park rules that means it must be moved once a year. Every November, New York City marathoners are greeted by Fred before he returns to his home at 90th Street.

Courtesy of NYRR

Ted Corbitt

New York is also home to another legend, Ted Corbitt. A distance-running pioneer, cofounder and first president of the NYRR, and acclaimed physical therapist, Corbitt showed a passion for excellence that carried over into every aspect of his life. The Greeks would have admired his self-determination. He completed a lifetime total of 223 marathons and ultramarathons. His training routinely included 200mile weeks in which a typical long run was around the island of Manhattan, 32 miles. The grandson of slaves, Corbitt was born in 1919 and developed his love for running at a young age on his family’s farm in South Carolina.

He became the first African American to represent the United States at an Olympic marathon, which he did in 1952 in Helsinki. He lived at 228th and Broadway in the Marble Hill section of upper Manhattan with his wife and son, Gary. That street was to be renamed Ted Corbitt Way in August 2014. “This is an honor that’s meaningful to me on many levels. It also institutionalizes a part

Ted’s son, Gary Corbitt, and author
Gail Kislevitz holding the sign for Ted
Corbitt Way at the unveiling in 2014.

of running history as all my father’s workouts started and ended at 228th and Broadway,” says Gary Corbitt. This also honors the residents of the Marble Hill Housing Projects of the 1950s and 1960s. During these years this community was making civil tights history by practicing racial integration in an exemplary fashion. “T know my mother is smiling about this honor,” says Gary Corbitt. “She gave my father the freedom to do megamileage training daily, and at night she helped with countless hours of administrative paperwork to help build the foundation of long-distance running as a sport. She was instrumental in all that he was able to accomplish.”

Jim Thorpe

Moving westward, Pennsylvania doesn’t have just a statue of a legend, it has an entire town: Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. Thorpe was voted the greatest athlete of the first half of the 20th century by an Associated Press poll in 1950. His parents were both half-white/half-Indian, and he was raised as an Indian named Wa-thohuk, or Bright Path. Born in Oklahoma, he attended the Carlisle Industrial Indian School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where he excelled in football, baseball, and track and field. He was also an intercollegiate champion in ballroom dancing. He was a member of the 1912 US Olympic team that competed in Stockholm, where he won gold medals in both the pentathlon and decathlon. Those medals were later taken away and his records stripped from the books when the Olympic committee learned he had played two seasons of semipro baseball, for which he was paid. When he died of a heart attack in 1953, his eight children held a traditional Indian burial ceremony on the Sac and Fox reservation in Oklahoma. The ceremony came to an abrupt halt when Thorpe’s third wife, Patsy Thorpe, barged in accompanied by state troopers and a hearse, seized the body, and drove away. She claimed that the state had reneged on a promise to erect a monument to her late husband.

The statue of Jim Thorpe in Jim Thorpe,
Pennsylvania.

She later cut a deal with the depressed Pennsylvania towns of Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk to merge and form the borough of Jim Thorpe, with city officials promising to honor Thorpe and build the memorial Oklahoma would not.

For 60 years the residents of Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, have honored Thorpe as a hometown hero in a town he never visited in his lifetime. The gravesite, a red granite mausoleum, rests on mounds of soil transported from Oklahoma and from the Stockholm Olympic stadium. Several statues of Thorpe have been erected, one honoring his prowess as a football player and another of him throwing the discus in honor of his track and field accomplishments. But recently several of his children have contested his burial in Pennsylvania and want his remains returned to Oklahoma. Other family members, many of whom visit the borough of Jim Thorpe every May for Jim Thorpe birthday ceremonies, oppose such a move. The dispute was resolved in 2014. His remains will stay in the borough named after him.

Jesse Owens

Still moving west, Ohio showcases another great athlete, Jesse Owens. The son of a sharecropper and grandson of a slave, Owens is best remembered for winning four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, one each in the 100 meters, the 200 meters, the long jump, and the 4 X 100-meter relay. He has the rare honor of two statues, a park, and a museum in his name. Ohio State University pays tribute to the “Buckeye Bullet” with a Jesse Owens Memorial Statue outside Jesse Owens Memorial Stadium. His hometown, Danville, Alabama, is the site of Jesse Owens Memorial Park and Museum, which includes a statue, a replica of his home, an interactive broad-jump pit, a 1936 Olympic torch replica, and a glass display case of rare memorabilia, including programs from the 1936 Olympics, replicas of track uniforms and shoes, medals, and trophies from Owens’s high school days. The museum’s small theater shows the movie Return to Berlin, in which Owens narrates the 1936 Olympics.

Bill Rodgers and Joan Benoit Samuelson

Hopping across states, Davenport, Iowa, is the home to the Bix 7, an annual July road race that Bill Rodgers won in 1980 and ’81. In 1980, his first Bix, he cruised to a victory with a time of 33:58, then a course record. Joan Benoit Samuelson won the race four times: 1983, ’85, ’86, and ’88. In ’83 she crushed the women’s

elson to the Bix, the race committee unveiled statues of the two at the finish line. Rodgers recalls the dedication: “My parents were there; Joanie and her parents were there. It was just so special. However, I do have to say my likeness isn’t that similar. I look like a 6-foot weightlifter.” The race also holds deep significance for Rodgers as it was his first race after the cancellation of the 1980 Olympics, where he had hoped to compete in the marathon.

Jim Ryun, Glenn Cunningham, Wes Santee

Kansas is home to legendary miler Jim Ryun, the first US high school miler to break four minutes. He established the high school and US open mile record of 3:55.3 during the summer after he graduated high school in 1965, a record that stood for 36 years until broken by Alan Webb’s 3:53.43 in 2001. Ryun also participated in the 1964, ’68, and °72 Summer Olympics. A statue of Ryun is located at Village West shopping mall in Kansas City, where an area called The Legends has statues of more than 80 Kansas luminaries. Included along with Ryun are running legends Glenn Cunningham and Wes Santee.

Frank Shorter

Continuing westward, in Boulder, Colorado, there is a statue of 1972 Olympic Marathon gold medalist Frank Shorter near the finish line of the Bolder Boulder

Shorter’s first reaction when he learned about the statue was, “Really? Why me? What an incredible gesture.”

Steve Bosley, his cofounder of the race, and many other friends were behind the commissioning of the statue. The land for the statue was donated by the University of Colorado and is located on the northeast corner of Folsom Field, where Shorter did much of his training for the Olympic Marathon. The statue has become a conversation starter for Shorter. When people approach him—and they do, a lot—he turns the conversation away from himself and asks them what their story is. “I like to personalize the connection between the athlete and the person,” says Shorter. “In our sport, we should all be approachable and appreciate the efforts of every runner.” The statue has its own cult following; a bagpipe band likes to dress it up in a kilt.

Meb
Keflezighi

and his family visiting the plaque at the site of Steve Prefontaine’s fatal car crash.

The University of Oregon may have the Mighty Ducks as a mascot, but to runners it might as well be the Mighty Pre. Every year, hundreds of runners come to Eugene, home of the University of Oregon and Hayward Field, to visit Pre’s Rock, the memorial plaque laid at the site where he died in a car crash in 1975. Track shoes, race bibs, singlets, hats, medals, and heartfelt handwritten notes can be found around the granite monument to Prefontaine, who set every American record from 2,000 to 10,000 meters by the time he died at the age of 24. Fans of Pre can also run in the annual Prefontaine Memorial Run, a 10K road race in Coos Bay, Oregon, where he grew up.

Alberto Salazar

A visit to Eugene would not be complete without a visit to Alberto Salazar. His statue is on the grounds of the University of Oregon, where he ran. Salazar, a native of Cuba, is regarded as one of the most influential track and field athletes in history. His accomplishments include three victories in the New York City Marathon and one at Boston. Salazar also set American records in the 5,000 and 10,000 meters. He now heads the Nike Oregon Project, aimed at producing Olympic-caliber athletes.

Rod Dixon

Jumping back east and down south to Atlanta, Georgia, there is a statue called Last Meter, commissioned in 1996 for the Olympics that were hosted that year

© Michael Lebowitz/Longrunpictures.com

in Atlanta. It was designed by Finnish sculptor Eino and was originally commissioned by a company in Finland, where it returned after the Games. A replica was sent to take its place in 1998.

Last Meter depicts four runners at the finish line of the 5,000-meter final from the 1976 Montreal Olympics: Lasse Viren (Finland, first), Dick Quax (New Zealand, second), Klaus-Peter Hildebrand (West Germany, third), and Rod Dixon (New Zealand, fourth). Dixon was ranked first in the world in the 5,000 meters in 1975, but it was his epic win at the 1983 New York City Marathon, beating Geoff Smith by nine seconds, that put him on the map as far as American running fans are concerned.

Wilma Rudolph

Our US tour of running legends finishes in Tennessee to pay homage to Wilma Rudolph, who was called “the fastest woman in the world” at the 1960 Rome Olympics. She was the first American woman to win three gold medals in one Olympics. She won the 100- and 200-meter races and anchored the US team to victory in the 4 X 100-meter relay, breaking records along the way. The 20th of 22 children (from her father’s two marriages), Rudolph was born prematurely on June 23, 1940, in Saint Bethlehem, Tennessee. Her early years were filled with illnesses. She suffered from double pneumonia and scarlet fever, and later she contracted polio and was fitted with metal leg braces.

She was voted into the Black Athletes Hall of Fame in 1973 and the National Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1974. In 1994, she died of brain cancer at age 54. A bronze statue in her likeness is in Clarksville, Tennessee.

Now our journey has ended, and I’m sure I missed a few commemorations, so my apologies to those I left out. Why is this important? Why should we care or go out of our way to visit these statues? As Frank Shorter put it so well: “It personalizes the great achievements of our running visionaries and legends, those that paved the way before us, like both Kelleys and Corbitt. It puts a name and a face to what our sport is all about.”

How to get a statue erected

What does it take to get a statue or a street sign or a plaque approved and built? The most important factor is an advocate—someone who is going to push it through every committee, every fund-raiser, every media event, for as long as it takes. For the Kelley statue in Mystic, that advocate was Jim Roy, a former student and member of Kelley’s track team and a lifelong resident of Mystic.

“We started kicking around the idea at Kelley’s funeral in August of 2011. A bunch of us thought it was a terrific way to honor him, although we knew he would hate the idea. But a statue is for the living, and everyone loved him so

much we decided to go ahead with the idea,” said Roy, who met Kelley when he was 14 and became a member of Kelley’s household, like all of Kelley’s runners and friends. Here is his process:

1, Form a committee and fill it with people who have passion for the vision, bring different talent to the project, and have great chemistry. The Kelley Statue Committee had Amby Burfoot; Julia Chase; attorney Neal Bobruff, who set up the 501(c)(3) pro bono; and Bill Rodgers as an honorary member.

2. Establish a tax-exempt nonprofit corporation.

3. Get town approval. This is the political part where the project can come to a halt. Roy attended numerous council meetings to keep the project alive as it passed through various town committees. The town needed to approve the project and the location of the statue.

4. Start fund-raising. Get out the word. Start a website. Roy brought in the local media, which took the story and ran with it. Since Kelley was already a hometown hero and was beloved by all, once the word got out the checks started coming in. Rodgers and Burfoot hosted book signings and gave all the profits to the fund. Roy called the B.A.A., which donated bibs to the Boston Marathon.

5. Hire the sculptor; confirm the fee. The committee researched sculptors online and started talking to artists. The estimated bids from sculptors averaged $100,000 for a life-sized statue of Kelley running with his dog. Brian Hanlon, a runner and sculptor from Toms River, New Jersey, heard of the project and offered to do it at cost.

6. Keep the media on it. Throughout the more than three-year project, Roy kept the media involved to help keep the project alive and filled with energy.

Road Trip

Here is a list of commemorations by state:

Alabama, Danville: Jesse Owens

Colorado, Boulder: Frank Shorter

Connecticut, Mystic: John J. Kelley

Georgia, Atlanta: Rod Dixon

Iowa, Davenport: Bill Rodgers and Joan Benoit Samuelson

Kansas, Kansas City: Jim Ryun, Glenn Cunningham, Wes Santee, Billy Mills

Maine, Cape Elizabeth: Joan Benoit Samuelson