Johnny

John J. Kelley was a lot of things to a lot of people but consistently a friend to all.

Rich Englehart

© 2012 42K(+) Press, Inc.

John Joseph Kelley, who died on August 21, 2011, was the first American to win the Boston Marathon since the end of World War II. He shared most of a name with the last American to win the race before him, John Adelbert Kelley, who won the 1945 race. J. A. Kelley was still a force in American distance running as John J. Kelley’s career was taking off, requiring those who followed the sport to devise a means of distinguishing one Kelley from the other. Thus, John A. Kelley became “John the Elder” and John J. Kelley became “Young” John Kelley.

When John A. Kelley died in 2004, a couple of veteran runners and followers of the sport wondered whether it would still be necessary to refer to John J. Kelley as “Young” John. That Kelley was still a focus of conversation four decades after his career peaked is a testament to his stature in the sport.

Amby Burfoot, the second American to win the Boston Marathon after World War II and a former executive editor for Runner’s World, called Kelley “the first modern runner.” It’s a description that invites contemplation.

Kelley’s best running years extended from the mid 1950s to the early ’60s, a modern era compared with say, the Renaissance, but one that seems prehistoric in comparison with the current sport of long-distance running. The majority of competitive American distance runners then were in either high school or college and raced on the track. Very few continued to run after graduation, and many of those who did continue were elite enough to nurture realistic ambitions of making the Olympic team. They often would compete “until the next Games” and then quit once they had either fulfilled their ambition or given up on it. A very small number of them kept on with serious competition, racing mostly on the track or in cross-country races.

There also were a small number of road racers, probably fewer than 300 nationwide. The best of those aspired to run the marathon at the Olympics or Pan American Games. Most of the rest also ran marathons, but there were few opportunities to do so or to race at any other distance, for that matter. Road racing was nonexistent in much of the country, though there were a few hotbeds, New England being perhaps the hottest.

But even there, little about the sport would look familiar to a modern runner. Distances, aside from the marathon, were not standardized; generally, a course was selected because it went from a convenient starting point to a convenient finishing point and the race distance was however far that was. The number of entrants was minuscule by today’s standards. Triple-digit fields were unheard of outside of the Boston Marathon, which usually managed to creep into three digits—and races with fewer than 10 entrants were not unknown.

Continued... | Other Editor’s Choices