Runner in Red

by Tom Murphy

  But her brow knit at the sight of the elderly woman in the red scarf, until suddenly she realized, and she broke into a grin as Bridget and Margaret blew kisses.

  After she was gone I stared a long moment at the tall oak, and I looked at Margaret who stood in front of this tree again where nearly half a century earlier Freddie Norman’s wife had snapped her photo. I marveled at all of it, the rhythms of life, how everything fits together—three generations united—and in the end things make sense.

  Tim Finn tapped Margaret’s shoulder, signaling it was time to go, but Bridget held her hand and looked into her mother’s eyes.

  “Why did you stop that day?”

  “Those were the rules,” Margaret said.

  “You were the first woman. The world would have given you the credit.”

  “We did not break the rules.”

  “But the rules were not fair.”

  “No, but they were the rules and we were governed by them.”

  “Why didn’t you break that one rule, one time?”

  “Why didn’t I keep you?” she said, and again Tim tapped Margaret, time to go.

  “Thank you,” Bridget said, as her eyes filled. “For coming.”

  “This will be my memory. My special memory above all others.”

  Margaret hugged Bridget, but Bridget took her hand one last time. “Clinton can hide you. But tell him, I will find you again.”

  Margaret smiled. “I would not expect less from my fiercely competitive daughter.”

  They hugged, then Tim led her across the street to the Governor’s car. She didn’t turn again until she was in the car and it was rolling away. Then her hand rose to the glass and she touched the window for one last shared moment.

  Slowly the car turned the corner and Margaret melted into the crowd again as she had done on this road nearly fifty years earlier.

  Another motorcycle with a side-car passed, and the reporter, Uta Pippig, craned her neck as if looking for someone, then I realized: she was looking for us.

  A three-time winner of the Boston Marathon from 1993 to 1995, Uta Pippig had been tapped by a TV station, not Channel 6, to follow Ellen and report on “Boston’s Comeback Gal” for a local audience.

  She gestured to Bridget and me to get into the cab. The cameraman had been cued on his role because he handed me his camera and stepped out of the sidecar, which had room only for Uta, Bridget and me.

  I caught on quick that my role would be to film the race the rest of the way, and off we went in pursuit of Ellen, as Jack waved goodbye then ran to his car to drive to the finish.

  By the time we caught up to Ellen she was cresting Heartbreak Hill near Boston College. Students jamming the street recognized her as an alum, and they went crazy.

  Steadily, she gained on two of the three who had broken away, one of the Kenyans and the Japanese runner. The two ran shoulder to shoulder as Ellen pulled in behind them at Boston College, then on the downhill beyond the college Ellen passed the two as if they were standing still.

  “Oh, boy, she means business!” Uta said. Then she turned up the volume on her radio to get Kathrine’s report and we learned that the other Kenyan from the break-away group—a twenty-year-old named Jema Kipyat making her marathon debut—had pulled behind Nita and Turgenov as the two leaders approached Cleveland Circle, the 23-mile mark.

  Ellen dropped in a 5:07 mile, prompting Uta to say, “That was fast!” and the effort pulled Ellen close enough to Nita and Turgenov on Beacon Street that we could see their backs. By Coolidge Corner, the 24-mile mark, Ellen was closing in on Nita and Turgenov as we rode in the motorcycle sidecar beside her.

  On the radio, Kathrine reported that Kipyat had passed the two favorites and was now running all by herself with a 50-yard lead heading into Kenmore Square.

  In Kenmore Square, below the Citgo sign and the 25-mile mark, Ellen pulled even with Nita and Turgenov and wasted little time taking them on. She passed them in a rush as she approached the Storrow Drive overpass with less than a mile to go, and yes, she was all about business.

  That’s when I saw red on her leg. I did not see it right away because it blended with her red shorts, but clearly the area of her stitches had begun to bleed. I glanced at Bridget who saw the bleeding, too, and she looked at me with great concern.

  I motioned to Ellen, mouthing “Your leg, your leg,” as our motorcycle pulled close to her, but she shook her head, blowing me off, and gave me a look like, “So what!”

  She was on a mission, and she strode hard to catch Kipyat, a young woman the same age she had been when she had tried for the Olympics. She pulled even with Kipyat as the two entered the underpass below the Mass. Ave. bridge.

  When they came out the other side, Kathrine had spotted the blood because she was talking about it on the radio and her cameraman put a close-up of Ellen’s left leg on the TV, which was carried on the big screen at the corner of Commonwealth Ave. and Hereford Street. The shot of her bleeding leg looked two stories tall on the big screen, causing the huge crowd to gasp.

  I saw the determined look in Ellen’s eye as we pulled even with her again, and I focused my camera in tight on her for a close-up. I read her lips, and she said with a smile, as if talking to me directly, “Step up! Step up!” Then striding hard, she turned onto Hereford Street and the stretch before the last turn and the final straightaway as we rode in the motorcycle sidecar beside her.

  Now all her concentration was straight ahead on Kipyat, who she passed as she made the turn from Hereford Street onto Boylston, and the sound from the crowd lining the final straightaway was like a volcanic eruption.

  Beaming, she came striding fast down the final straightaway in the lead, and the crowd roared. This was the stretch I had pedaled along that night with Ellen while she ran beside me and had talked about “getting it done.”

  Spectators on both sides of Boylston Street replicated a “wave” from a baseball game. They threw their hands into the air cheering in sync with Ellen’s smooth stride as she powered up Boylston to the finish in her red shorts and yellow D.A.A. singlet, expanding her lead, and cameras on the media bridge showed her approach on the big screens as millions more watched on TV.

  Then with a block to go, she did something impromptu: she thrust her right arm into the air and shouted, “For Pop! For Pop!”

  The crowd matched her with a chant of, “For Pop! For Pop!” as Bridget, sitting beside me in the motorcycle sidecar, beamed. Pop stood on the bridge above the finish line, also smiling broadly, and the cameras projected his proud face onto the big screens.

  And that’s how the race ended, with Ellen punching a hole in the blue, cloudless sky with her fist as she crossed the finish line, shouting, “For Pop! For Pop!”

  And with that, she banished the demons!

  EPILOGUE

  The Last 385 Yards

  During the celebration at the finish line, Bridget gave me Margaret’s diamond to give to Ellen. At Fenway she had invited me to join the Maloney family, now the gift of Margaret’s diamond was the formal expression of that.

  I had the diamond set into an engagement ring and I took Ellen to a resort on Cape Cod that summer to ask her to marry me.

  She said yes, and we walked along the shore at sunset. I held her hand, the one with the ring, and gently I squeezed her fingertips, savoring the envelopment. Everything had come together to bring us to this point, all the roads beginning with our chance encounter on a path in Philadelphia had coalesced to deliver us to this place where the sun-splashed sky met the open sea and created a path to a new life.

  All life came from the sea, as Pop knew, life as brutal as those who threatened Margaret’s war-torn children, yet life as graceful as the curl of Ellen’s fingertips. Like the waves that lapped unevenly at the shoreline, however, there was nothing even about life or predictable about the way alternately it visits sadness
upon us, or offers hope.

  And that is how it was when Bridget found Margaret again.

  Bridget had told Margaret she would not stop searching for her, and she did not. She learned that Clinton had created a new life for Margaret in Seattle, but it was not to be a long life. That was the sadness in Bridget’s discovery: she learned that Margaret’s lung cancer had progressed rapidly after their meeting at the Boston Marathon in April.

  Bridget convinced Clinton to let her come to Seattle, and that’s where hope comes in. Bridget was able to be at Margaret’s bedside for her passing, and in the end mother and daughter were reunited.

  Bridget gave Margaret what she wanted, which was to remain undiscovered so no children in Central America would be put in jeopardy. In return Bridget got what she wanted. As she held her mother’s hand and Margaret took her last breath, Bridget got to experience where she came from. She came from someone special who acted for others, a lady who embraced her vulnerability; thus Bridget gained the connection she had sought so avidly. She no longer had to feel isolated. Now she could value herself and that gave her a platform to connect to others, which is what she had told me in the car after visiting Sister Josephine she wanted most: connection.

  That was the lesson I learned during my journey with Bridget, that we get when we give.

  As Ellen and I walked along the shore, kicking at the surf, I looked down and I focused again on how the waves did not roll evenly below our feet. Instead, they rushed up the incline in staccato fashion, making white, foamy edges as they slipped back and tried to come up the slope again.

  Life contains sadness—the philosopher Hobbes described life as “short, brutish and mean”— but it’s climbing up the inclines of adversity, slipping back yet trying again with those we love, that counters the sadness and leads to hope.

  And it’s hope that gives us the opportunity to discover the diamonds we have inside us, like the diamond that was missing from Bridget’s medal, but through Margaret’s gift to Bridget and Bridget’s generosity to me, I was able to put the diamond on Ellen’s finger.

  I don’t think of “Margaret’s diamond,” earned as it was with a spirited, bold, and courageous run in 1951, as a material thing. To me, it’s a value, the understanding that life can be full of richness and hope if we give unconditionally and trust in the outcome.

  As I walked along the seashore holding Ellen’s hand, I realized that learning that principle, that we get when we give, was the gift I had received by saying yes to Bridget and “running” with her.

  And so today because of Bridget’s generosity, Margaret’s diamond sits on Ellen’s finger. It connects me to Ellen and others.

  It counters sadness and inspires hope.

  It gives me love, luck and stability.

  It reminds me every day: Step up! Step up!

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  After graduating from the University of Wisconsin, Tom—a life-long runner—first taught in Boston schools where he fell in with the road running crowd. With John J. Kelley, the 1957 Boston Marathon winner, Tom wrote Just Call Me Jock in 1982, a history of the Boston Marathon as seen through the eyes of Jock Semple, the colorful race co-director. In 2006, Tom wrote a book about the aviation heroes of 9/11, Reclaiming the Sky, which led the president of Fordham University to invite Tom to create an institute—the Human Resiliency Institute—to put healing lessons from the book into programs. The institute’s lead program, Edge4Vets, teaches military veterans how to tap their strengths to get jobs. See edge4vets.org. Tom also created a beer called Barb’s Beer to raise funds to help cure lung cancer in his late wife (a Boston Marathon runner’s) name. Visit barbsbeer.org.

  Stay in touch with Tom and learn more about new projects he’ll be developing to expand Runner in Red, including an essay competition for women to express the joy of running, at runnerinred.com.

  More on the History of Running

  For those who have had their interest in running and women’s running piqued by Runner in Red, other books can add to an understanding of the sport, including

  Just Call Me Jock: A History and Legacy of Boston’s Mr. Marathon, updated version, 2017, by Tom Murphy and John J. Kelley (Barb’s Beer Foundation, 2017).

  Also consider the following books by these outstanding marathon personalities:

  First Ladies of Running: 22 Inspiring Profiles of the Rebels, Rule Breakers and Visionaries Who Changed the Sport Forever by Amby Burfoot (Rodale, 2016)

  Boston Marathon: History of the World’s Premier Running Event by Tom Derderian (Human Kinetics, 1993)

  Marathon Woman: Running the Race to Revolutionize Women’s Sports by Katherine Switzer (Da Capo Press, 2017)

  Marathon Man: My 26-Mile Journey from Unknown Grad Student to the Top of the Running World by Bill Rodgers and Matthew Shepatin (Thomas Dunne Books, 2013).