Jock Semple

(This piece is for my book titled Pacesetters: Runners Who Informed Me Best and Inspired Me Most. I am posting an excerpt here each week, this one from January 1988.)

JUST JOCK. Many people make names for themselves. But only a special few rate mention by a single name that identifies them instantly.

We know Billy and Joanie that way. Before them, there was Jock.

John D. Semple is his full name. He has always signed off his letters to me with “Johnny,” but is universally known in the sport as “Jock.”

He brought the nickname with him from Scotland 60 years ago. He also brought along the combativeness needed to make it in the U.S. as an immigrant laborer during the Depression.

Jock has never outdistanced his feisty start in this country. He was fighting when I first met him in his 60s and still is today in his 80s.

We clashed the day Jock became infamous – April 19^th, 1967. An hour later, he and Kathrine Switzer would meet for the first time.

That Boston Marathon day at Hopkinton High School, I ducked inside the only restroom without a line stretching outside. A dozen extremely fit and somber-looking runners sat on benches or the floor in this locker room. They glanced up at me, then quickly retreated back inside themselves.

Suddenly a wild-eyed little man burst through the door. “What are you doing here?” he shouted. “This room is for seeded runners, not bums like you!”

“But… but…” I stammered. “I was just looking for a bathroom.”

“Use the one out there,” he ordered. “Wait in line like everyone else. Out! Out! Out!”

A little later he jumped on me for standing too close to the starting line. “You again!” he roared. “If you give me any ore trouble, I’ll take your number.”

We shook hands after the race as I introduced myself for the first time as a Track & Field News staffer. Jock apologized for how he had acted, but not why.

His biggest source of pride and frustration was, and still is, the Boston Marathon. At the time, the race was his year-round passion, and its storms usually centered on him.

Jock had set himself up as guardian of the race’s rules and fought to protect them. He argues to this day that he was only angry with Switzer for entering this male-only race, not because she was a woman. Indeed he quickly welcomed women into the marathon when the AAU threw out its bad old rule five years later.

That same year, 1972, Jock and I raveled to the Munich Olympics together. I came to know him there as a most generous man who would freely share his time (as a storyteller with a lifetime of running lore and no reluctance to embellish it) and talents (as an athletic trainer) with anyone who cared about the sport half as much as he did.

Jock remained a fighter, though. While on that Olympic tour he went looking for a steam bath in Salzburg, Austria. He came back with a black eye that he never explained.

I’ve seen him at most of the Boston Marathons since then. In one recent year he fought back from breaking both legs in an auto accident.

Last spring he acted as feisty as ever on marathon weekend. He voiced disgust over the spending policies of the new sponsors, and he agreed publicly to keep disagreeing with Kathrine Switzer (now his friend) over what had happened that long-ago April.

1987 ended with the sad news that Jock had cancer and was confined to what was called an “extended-care facility.” In his case this was thought to be the wrong term, because he wasn’t expected to live much longer.

Then Jock confounded his doctors by rallying. He climbed out of this wheelchair to walk with support, and vowed to move again unaided.

“No one has any delusions about how these things work,” wrote Boston Globe reporter Jackie McMullen last month. “Jock may walk again, but he still has cancer. There are plenty of battles waiting after this one has ended.”

Jock’s own assessment of his condition: “I have hopes.” He’s still fighting after all these years.

UPDATE. John D. (Johnny) (Jock) Semple died two months after this article’s publication. He was 84.

His book titled Just Call Me Jock, written with John J. Kelley and Tom Murphy, is worth searching out at sources such as Amazon.com.

[Many books of mine, old and recent, are now available in two different formats: in print and as ebooks from Amazon.com. Latest released was Miles to Go. Other titles: Going Far, Home Runs, Joe’s Journal, Joe’s Team, Learning to Walk, Long Run Solution, Long Slow Distance, Pacesetters, Run Right Now, Run Right Now Training Log, See How We Run, and Starting Lines, plus Rich Englehart’s book about me, Slow Joe.]