(When Runner’s World cut me loose as a columnist in 2004, I
wasn’t ready to stop magazine work. This year I post the continuing columns
from Marathon & Beyond. Much of
that material now appears in the book Miles to Go.)
2005. Many
of my best friends in this sport are older than I am. Hal Higdon was the first
of these, George Sheehan was the closest, and Paul Reese was the
longest-lasting.
I look up to them as pacesetters through life, in running and other arenas. None of us can grow younger, but we all can find leaders who show how to age actively and slow gracefully.
I look up to them as pacesetters through life, in running and other arenas. None of us can grow younger, but we all can find leaders who show how to age actively and slow gracefully.
No one I’ve known has
packed more activity into his upper years than Paul Reese. He ran across the
United States at age 73, finished crossing the remaining states at 80 and
published three books about these experiences (and left another book
unpublished).
No one I know has
approached his own finish line with more grace than Paul. Evidence of that will
come later in this story, but first I need to tell how he lived and how I
joined his ever-widening circle of “best friends.”
Paul was a Marine by
choice, a schoolteacher in his second profession and a communicator by nature.
He phoned often and wrote long and well – in books, articles, journals, and
especially in letters and email.
I’m not overstating to say
that Paul became my second second father. He took over that role in 1993 from
George Sheehan, who’d first played that role after my own dad’s too-early
passing.
Paul and I met at the 1967
Santa Barbara Marathon. On our first day of racing together I finished a little
ways ahead of Paul. This began years of good-hearted competition between us.
He would beat me at
marathons and beyond (especially beyond, where he shone and I stunk). I’d
usually outrun him at shorter distances, where my background in speed trumped
his endurance.
He would start every race
fast. I would begin timidly, often catching and passing him near the finish. He
took to accusing me of “stalking.”
The last time we ran a
race together was 1992 at the Avenue of the Giants Marathon. Paul was 75 years
old by then. I was, in his term, “a marathon of years younger” – his junior by
26, that is.
As usual I started slower.
He gauged his lead each time we met on the double-out-and-back course.
As usual I passed Paul
near the end. His reaction, muttered with grimness on his face but goodness in
his heart: “Damn you, you sneaky runt!”
We finished about a minute
apart in our final race together. This symbolized the closeness we felt from
the first day we met through the final days of his life.
My first
column in Marathon & Beyond spoke
of Paul Reese. “The grandest old man of the roads,” I called him. He was 87
then.
Paul responded
to the column as I would have expected: “Cutest old man, most handsome old man,
most dashing old man – all these, while appropriate and applicable, are quite a
few notches below ‘grandest’.”
This would be
my last personal note from Paul. I’m glad he saw that tribute, because he was
grand and because he wouldn’t see another column in M&B. He told in that same letter about facing surgery for a
defective heart valve.
“I’m
attempting to hold out until January [2005],” he said of that operation. “I
want to emerge from the surgery and recovery, and to get back to healthy living
– Krispy Kreme donuts, In/Out hamburgers, pizza and all such! “
Paul’s
condition couldn’t wait until the new year. His surgery was moved to October
2004.
“The good news
is that I’m still here to tell about it,” he wrote the next week in a group letter
to friends. Complications followed. He wrote again to us friends in late
October, with a good-bye of sorts.
“One thing you
learn as you sift through life is that the most precious gift of all is love,
and I’m blessed to have a generous share of that. Of course, it could be argued
that I am such a splendid person, what other choice is there but to love me!”
Paul died soon
afterward. He was the third older running hero I lost that year, after Jack
Foster and Johnny Kelley. This is the chance you take, and one well worth
taking, when you look up to your elders.
Later. Paul had ended his first book, Ten Million Steps, with this line: “One
of the secrets of aging gracefully is always to have something to look forward
to.”
His runs
across the remaining states followed, then two more books – Go East, Old Man, and The Old Man and the Road. He left behind
a fourth, the unpublished America on Foot.
Paul also left
another long trip unfinished. In 2003 he’d crossed Montana (with wife Elaine,
as always, driving their motorhome) on what was intended to be a multi-stage
passage from the Canadian to the Mexican border. This wasn’t a bad way to go –
still looking toward doing more.
This career
Marine would scoff at me describing him with lines from a protest singer. But
these words by Bob Dylan say who Paul was:
“May your hands always be busy,
may your feet always be swift.
May you have a firm foundation,
when the winds of changes shift.
May your heart always be joyful,
may your song always be sung.
May you stay forever young.”
Stay busy, keep moving,
stand firm, stay positive, die young as late as possible. That’s how Paul Reese
lived, and why he became a pacesetter of mine.
(Photo: Paul
Reese would set the example for prostate cancer treatment and active recovery.)
[Many books of mine, old
and recent, are now available in two different formats: in print and as ebooks
from Amazon.com. The titles: Going Far, Home Runs, Joe’s Team, Learning to
Walk, Long Run Solution, Long Slow Distance, Miles to Go, Pacesetters, Running
With Class, Run Right Now, Run Right Now Training Log, See How We Run, Starting
Lines, and This Runner’s World, plus Rich Englehart’s book about me, Slow Joe.]
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