Runner in Red

by Tom Murphy

  At the library I found Time and Newsweek from April, 1971. Both had stories on the “Boston Marathon Stand-off,” as they called the finish line incident between Bridget and Pop Gallagher a quarter of a century earlier.

  Reading the old clips interested me, not only for the dated look of the clothes, or the cheap prices of items in the black and white ads, or even the corny copy of the ads themselves (“I can’t believe I ate the WHOLE thing!”), but for the tenor of the times which appeared to value men over women, without pretense or shame.

  Both Time and Newsweek told how Bridget had gotten into running despite the resistance, i.e., rules created by men that kept women from competing in races such as the Boston Marathon. Bridget’s teacher, a nun named Sister Josephine, had formed a union with Bridget to resist, according to the story, with the nun even helping Bridget adapt a pair of men’s track shoes.

  Those were the days before shoe companies made running shoes for women, so the two crammed tissue paper into the toe box of a pair of men’s flats. They made them fit so Bridget could run the roads with two male friends, Jack Maloney and Steve Roman, top runners at Boston College High School. The sight of a girl in short pants running along the roads was unfamiliar, and Bridget was taunted by male drivers who hollered out their windows, “What are you runnin’ for, to catch a husband?”

  Mrs. Gallagher, taking a cue from Pop, was also upset by her daughter’s running, according to the story. “You’ll get big, unsightly muscles,” Bridget quoted Mrs. Gallagher saying. “Nobody will want to marry you.”

  A doctor at Peter Bent Brigham testified that running was unhealthy for women. “Running distances greater than 200 meters could inhibit their ability to procreate,” he said, bluntly.

  But the real rub was with Pop, who accused Bridget of bringing shame on his family with her “wanton disregard for the rules.” It was easy, the articles hinted, to see how this father/daughter relationship was a powder keg waiting to explode, and it did just that at the finish line of the 1971 Boston Marathon.

  Still, I didn’t understand: if Pop had opposed Bridget, why was he training Ellen to win the race? And why had she accepted his help?

  Was Pop’s interest in Ellen strategic, his way to get back at her mother for embarrassing him in 1971? If so, why was Ellen complicit? And the Runner in Red? Was that Bridget’s strategy, her attempt to embarrass her father to show how the rule enforcer had been inept at enforcing the rules as early as 1951?

  I couldn’t figure it out, so I kept digging.

  The librarian directed me to the microfiche room, where I found copies of the Boston Globe dating back to the 1890s. I started with the first Boston Marathon, April 15, 1897, eager to gain an understanding of the early runners and what drove them, especially Pop Gallagher.

  Fifteen runners trudged over dirt roads in 1897 in the initial Boston Marathon. Tiger had been right, most of the runners were rough-hewn types, laborers and such. I read through countless stories of the early years, including 1917, when “Bricklayer” Bill Kennedy—who took Pop under his wing after Pop emigrated from Ireland as a 17-year-old in 1932—won the gold medal after sleeping on a pool table in the South End.

  I sensed a special camaraderie among these “plodders,” as they were called. Ridiculed by the general population for the countless hours they spent training on often deserted roads, each generation appeared to take it upon themselves to pass the mantle to the next, preserving all that had come before. That’s why Pop had committed himself so strongly to his Dorchester Club, I guessed, and that’s why Jock Semple—Pop’s chief rival during their years on the roads— had given just as selflessly to create his own marathon club, the “B.A.A. boys.” The two plodders had competed vigorously during the 30s and 40s, and now they continued their head-to-head competition through their young surrogates during the 1950s.

  Pop and Jock’s dedication to their clubs represented an extension of the rivalry that had given their lives definition when they were young. Later, dutiful servants to the traditions of the race, they fulfilled their responsibility by mentoring boys who followed them into the sport. It was here, I realized, that Bridget posed a threat: she was not a boy! She and the other women who wished to run in the mid-1960s challenged everything the old guard had worked so hard to establish and now struggled just as hard to preserve.

  A line from the 1971 Time article resonated with me: “There’s no place for a woman in this,” Pop had said in explaining his opposition to his daughter, but now I understood the full meaning of his quote: women belonged on the sidelines. Men owned the thick of things. Women transgressed when they presumed equality and pressured for inclusion in the action.

  In Pop’s mind stepping across the line to block Bridget in 1971 was simply an extension of his philosophy on the nature of the world and how it worked.

  “Rules”—and insisting on the observance of them—served as a convenient vehicle to ensure that the structure be sustained. Suddenly I saw the 1971 “stand-off” in a fresh light. Bridget and Pop’s conflict served as the perfect dramatic setting for the clash of ideals that had surged to the surface on so many fronts during the turbulent 60s and came to a head by 1971 with Bridget and Pop.

  This is what Pop had been protecting. It was a sentiment as faded and dated as the pages of the old periodicals themselves: his was a resentment for women who overstepped. “Interlopers,” he had called them, those who threatened the order of the world that had formed him.

  I came to the library to pursue my attraction to Ellen, the daughter, but I became more deeply intrigued by Bridget, her mother, my friend and mentor, the person who had given me a helping hand in Philadelphia when I had been at my lowest ebb.

  I was intrigued by Bridget, a woman of countless conflicting drives, because of her personal investment in me but also because her struggle—to turn a concept such as the Runner in Red into something real—was not unlike my own struggle to find a patch of ground I could stand on to call my own.

  But Ellen continued to confuse me. Why was Ellen, a woman who benefited from the pioneering efforts of her mother, so opposed to Bridget—and why was Ellen siding with the man who had not only blocked Bridget at the finish line but had opposed his daughter her whole life for no other reason than that she was a woman?

  The next morning I went to Channel 6 to see Stan, thinking maybe he could shed light, but instead he greeted me with “You’re hired. Bridget called yesterday. She wants you to be her cameraman on the Runner in Red project.”

  “Can I see her?”

  “She’ll be up from New York soon. You said you wanted to be back in the middle of the action. Well, son, game’s on for you now.”

  He signaled me to follow him to his car and we drove out to a firehouse at the corner of Route 16 and Commonwealth Ave. in Newton, the 17-mile mark in the Boston Marathon.

  We got out of his car and he motioned to me to follow him as he walked up Commonwealth Ave. “This is the start of Heartbreak Hill,” he said. “The race presents the runners with three consecutive rises over the next three miles, from here up to Boston College. This stretch of Commonwealth Ave., this is where your focus will be when you work with Bridget. This is where the Canadian runners insisted they saw the Runner in Red.”

  “Can I ask you a question?” I said. “This whole thing, finding a woman who may or may not exist. I understand what Bridget gains in a political sense if she proves the legend true—she gives women a new hero. I get it, but I met Bridget’s daughter and the project is pitting mother against daughter. What’s the real motivation for Bridget? Is this all about making a political statement, or is it revenge, a desire by Bridget to stick it to Pop Gallagher for something he did to her in 1971? And why would Bridget risk her relationship with her daughter for that?”

  Stan smiled. “If you know Bridget there’s one thing true about her, she’s an adamantine personality.”

  “Meaning?�
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  “She never gives up when truth is the issue.”

  “You’ve known her a long time?”

  “Since we were kids in Dorchester and hopped fences as the cops chased us after we pilfered goods from Baker’s Chocolate. She was a fast runner even then.” He smiled, and I could see in his eyes the deep affection he had for Bridget. “She’s all about story, son. Give her a storyline and she will stop at nothing to get to the bottom of it. I remember a time when she was in high school. There was a nun— Sister Josephine. I remember the nun’s name because Bridget talked so much about the support she got from her teacher. Sister Josephine balanced out all the deficits Bridget faced living under Pop’s roof.

  “One day Sister gave the class an assignment to write an essay advocating a point of view. Bridget picked running. She tried to get Pop for an interview, but Pop refused. Not to be deterred Bridget took the T into town to Boston Garden where she showed up at Jock Semple’s physiotherapy clinic. Semple was training a group of his B.A.A. runners and she asked him point blank why women couldn’t run in the Boston Marathon. He said, ‘Because it’s against the rules,’ but Bridget kept pestering him for a ‘real reason.’ Johnny Kelley, Semple’s top runner for the B.A.A., and Tim Horgan, a Herald sports reporter, took her aside and brought her downstairs for coffee. Horgan told her, ‘Let me see what you come up with.’ He liked her story so much he had the Herald run her essay, “Why Can’t Jane Run?” on the front page.

  “Pop was livid, of course, and I suspect she paid dearly at home in terms of the silent treatment. But this was the 60s, when Roberta Gibb, Kathrine Switzer and Sara Mae Berman and others were coming to the fore. So fighting for a cause has always been a central theme for Bridget. I’m not surprised that she would want a definitive answer on the Runner in Red, to know whether the legend is true or not. But I do think Roman may see things differently.’”

  Stan told me how Roman and Jack Maloney, Bridget’s estranged husband, shared a special bond with Bridget. Jack Maloney and Roman were best friends at Boston College High School. After Bridget’s story appeared in the Herald, Jack showed up at Bridget’s school and said, “Jane can run with me.” She started training with him, doing workouts on the B. C. High track, and he introduced her to Roman. Jack and Roman were the city’s top high school milers and training with them got her into great shape. By the time the three of them got to Boston College, Bridget took up with Roman. “It didn’t end well,” Stan said.

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know the details, but in the end, Bridget married Jack while Roman went off to Wall Street.”

  “So you think the Runner in Red is a play by Roman to get Bridget back?”

  “He keeps buying TV stations where she works. And he’s paid a lot of dough to buy a sponsorship at the Marathon to celebrate the Runner in Red on the chance they find her. But I doubt his interest is community advancement, or even the advancement of women’s running. He bought another company, one that makes running shoes, with a shoe called ‘Women First.’ Roman is all about making money, and he doesn’t care if he has to use people to do that, even a former paramour.”

  “You think he’s using Bridget so he can sell shoes after she finds the Runner in Red for him? After that, though, then what?”

  “Roman is still in a race with Jack Maloney, if you ask me. Throughout their running careers Roman never lost a race to Jack.”

  “Except the most important one.”

  “I think you’re on the right track with your question, kid.”

  As I parked at the curb in front of my place in Dorchester, my cell phone rang, but I didn’t recognize the 617 number.

  “Colin?” the voice said on the other end.

  “Bridget?”

  “How’s my bridge-burner? Stan taking good care of you?”

  “I’ve got to talk to you, Bridget.”

  “Good idea. Let’s go inside.”

  “Where are you?”

  “In a parking space across the street.”

  I turned and saw that unmistakable smile as she sat behind the wheel of her parked car, her phone to her ear.

  “How did you know where I lived?”

  “I’m an investigative reporter, remember? Plus you filled out a job application,” she said, but by the time she finished her sentence she was standing at my driver’s side window. “Come on, sweetie, let’s talk. Time’s a wastin.’”

  Rather than go upstairs to my apartment she suggested we get a table at the tavern. “I need a beer,” she said.

  Moon Shot didn’t recognize her, but Tiger did and his eyes opened wide at having a celebrity in the place. We found a quiet spot at the back of the room and Bridget said, “Who wants the first question?”

  “Me,” I said. “Why are you risking your relationship with Ellen to find the Runner in Red?”

  “Wow, that’s an awfully big opening line.”

  ‘Why is the Runner in Red more important to you than your daughter?”

  “First, let me say I love Ellen more than you or anyone can know. Let me leave it at that for the moment, OK?”

  “Are you looking to get back at your father because he stopped you at the finish line in 1971?”

  “My, you have educated yourself in the few weeks since Philadelphia.”

  “Tell me straight, Bridget, or I’m going upstairs and this is over. Do you hate your father so thoroughly that you’d risk losing your daughter?”

  “Hate? That’s a strong word.”

  “He stopped you at the finish line.”

  “Let me get two beers,” she said, and she went to the bar. Tiger who could talk the paint off a wall became shy as a freshman at a college mixer as Bridget stood beside him and ordered two pints. She set mine in front of me, and took a long hit on hers before continuing.

  “I oppose him to my core. That’s more precise.” I watched as shadows appeared below her eyes and lines marred her face. “My disdain for Pop—that’s a more accurate word—and my desire to find the Runner in Red are the same thing. I have never told anybody this. Not even Jack, whom I’ve known since I was fifteen.”

  “You’re back with your husband?”

  “In a manner of speaking. But he supports Pop training Ellen and that puts us in opposition. But that’s a topic for another conversation, another day.”

  “Why did you run in ’71? Were you trying to get Pop to oppose you.”

  “I ran because I had promised my teacher.”

  “Your teacher?”

  “Sister Josephine, my nun in high school. You once told me your brother watched out for you. I had Sister Josephine. She encouraged me during my darkest days with Pop.”

  “Were you trying to get Pop to block you, to draw him out?”

  She smiled, a faint one. “He always blocked me. It didn’t matter what the occasion was. It was like I was a bad seed to him my whole life. That’s how he made me feel. He never once smiled at me. Never once patted me on the back. No affection. Ever.” She took another hit on her beer. “Even when I tried to reach out, when I was a young girl, all he cared about were his boys. They were his life. Every Sunday, his boys and his road races. I thought maybe that’s how I could get close to him. One Sunday I offered to ride in the car with him and give out sponges during a road race. But when I reached out the car window to give a sponge to Johnny Kelley, from Jock’s B.A.A. team, Pop slapped my hand. ‘Dammit, girl,’ he shouted. ‘Kelley’s a Semple man!’ Every time I tried to climb under a corner of the tent and enter his world he shut me out.

  “But I loved running because of Sister Josephine. She took me to the Boston Marathon in 1957. I was five, but I remember how we stood at the finish line. I was just tall enough to look over the rope and I watched as Johnny Kelley—Young John—came speeding down the final straightaway on Exeter Street. Pop had forbidden me to go to the finish lin
e, where he said I would be in the way of the men who did the work, but Sister—a friend of the family—took me without his knowledge and I was swept up in all the pageantry. As I watched Young John float down those last few yards, his eyes wide and the crowd roaring, I decided I wanted to be a runner, too.”

  “But Pop blocked you?”

  “At every turn.”

  “But he’s not that way with Ellen.”

  “It’s terrible what he did to her before the Olympic Trials, the workouts he gave her. It was a regime too rigorous for her at that point in her development. I tried to tell her, but she blew me off and sure enough she got hurt and failed in the race. She hit the skids after her loss and married that empty suit.”

  “Crutchfield?

  “A real zero. I tried to warn her, but she married him anyway. Then after that fell apart, she moved to Oregon, where things really went off the track.”

  “Now she’s back in Boston.”

  “Yes, preparing for a comeback, but I feel like Pop is stealing my daughter. He’s giving her workouts way too stressful again. It’s the same movie and she will pay the price.” She looked at me and I could see all the way to the back of her blue eyes, the pain back there.

  “Is that why you want to find the Runner in Red, to embarrass Pop and pressure him to stop training Ellen?”

  “That and because he hurt me more powerfully than I’ve ever been hurt.”

  “Oh?”

  “Jack and Steve were both top collegiate milers at Boston College, but they wanted to try the Boston Marathon in 1971. It was Jack who gave me the idea to run the race and go for a women’s world record as a way to pressure the B.A.A. to change the rules and allow women to compete. The women’s world record was 3:02:53, held by Caroline Walker. As I approached the finish line I was exhausted, but I was exhilarated, too, knowing that I had come the whole way and I was on pace for the world record. Jack got fourth that day and stood behind the line cheering me on, while Roman, who got third, was off somewhere giving an interview. Then Pop appeared suddenly, waving his arms and shouting, ‘Get out!”’