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Boston Marathon Begins, Salutes Kelley

Posted on: Monday, 18 April 2005, 12:00 CDT

BOSTON - A field of 20,453 runners crossed the Hopkinton starting line on Monday in the 109th Boston Marathon. For the first time in decades, Americans could be among the top finishers when they reach the Back Bay.

Olympian Alan Culpepper is hoping to give the United States its first top five men's finish since 1987. No American runner has won Boston since Lisa Larsen-Weidenbach won the women's race 20 years ago.

It's quite a slump for the Americans in the world's oldest annual marathon, which was dominated in its early days by runners like Johnny Kelley. A two-time winner, Kelley finished second a record seven times and lined up at the start on Patriots Day 61 times.

The race patriarch died in October, but reminders of him are scattered throughout the course, from a picture of him painted on the starting line to the "Young at Heart" statue at Heartbreak Hill.

"Everything we do here, it's all done in memory of Johnny Kelley," said Guy Morse, the executive director of the Boston Athletic Association, which organizes the race. "We're just not ready to let go of him and what he's done to inspire the runners."

Kelley's bib No. 61 was retired this weekend. A picture of him has been hung in the Cheers bar not far from the finish line.

Runners were serenaded with "Young at Heart" before the race, even though Kelley wasn't there to sing it. And 1985 winner Jacqueline Gareau, better known as the woman who "finished" second to Rosie Ruiz, will serve as grand marshal - a position created to honor Kelley when he became too frail to continue running.

"The whole week is going to have a Johnny Kelley presence," race director Dave McGillivray said. "So he'll be here."

The Red Sox have Johnny Pesky, and the Celtics have Red Auerbach - institutional icons that everyone can cheer for while the active players come and go. For the Marathon, for most of the last century, it was Kelley who embodied the spirit of the race.

"People always talk about the traditions of the Boston Marathon. He was one of the traditions," said Amby Burfoot, the 1968 winner and an editor at Runner's World magazine, which named Kelley the runner of the 20th Century.

Timothy Cherigat and Catherine Ndereba led a Kenyan sweep last year and return to try to extend their country's dominance. Ndereba is trying for an unprecedented fourth Boston Marathon women's title.

The temperature in Hopkinton at the start of the race was 68 degrees with an 8 mph wind. That's a little warm for April, but not as hot as last year, when the temperature hit 86 in Boston.

State police set up four aid stations along the route to help runners who have problems because of the heat.

For the first time this year, the BAA offered temporary fencing to property owners to keep runners from relieving themselves on lawns before the race. But few took them up on the offer.

One of them, Sandi McCarthy, 52, stood near the red snow fence in front of her home on Hayden Rowe as runners walked from the Athletes Village to the starting line.

"I think it's crazy the damage they do," she said.

Kelley won the race in 1935 and '45 and had 18 top 10 finishes. He completed the distance 58 times in 61 starts, the last in 1992 at age 84. In 1993-94, he ran only the last seven miles from Newton, starting at the Young at Heart statue that pictures Kelley in his first win, at 27, holding hands with him in his last race.

Since 1995, he served as the race's grand marshal, preceding the leaders from Hopkinton to Boston's Back Bay in a pace car. But for the thousands of fun-runners who never had a chance to win, Kelley will be remembered as the spirit of the race.

"He won the race, but he was more than a competitor. There are so many competitors," said Bill Rodgers, who won four times from 1975-80.

"It's like there's a seat missing, a chair missing, and it's unusual. He personified the marathon for so many. Johnny was the guy that stood for all the good things about the Boston Marathon."

At a party to kick off marathon weekend last week, they played a video of him singing the "Young at Heart" in 1999, when he missed the race because of pneumonia. When he sang, "And if you should survive to 105," he tapped himself on the chest and smiled.

He thought he was going to make it.

Kelley was looking forward to the Red Sox playoffs when he died in a nursing home on Oct. 6. Rodgers inherited the honor of throwing out the first pitch at Fenway Park on Marathon Sunday.

"Johnny lived so long, we thought he was going to live forever," Rodgers said. "Sometimes runners think they're going to live forever, but it doesn't happen that way. But Johnny came closest of all."

Source: Associated Press/AP Online

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