Vol. 1 No. 43 John J. Kelley, RIP

 'John J. Kelley, RIP, 1930-2011: 1957 Boston Marathon Winner; America's First Modern Road Runner' to you.


John J. Kelley, RIP, 1930-2011: 1957 Boston Marathon Winner; America's First Modern Road Runner
Posted By Amby Burfoot On August 21, 2011
Nineteen fifty-seven Boston Marathon winner John J. Kelley “The Younger” crossed the final finish line early this morning in North Stonington, CT, just a few miles from Mystic, where he had lived most his adult life. Kelley died with few more possessions than he began with 80 years ago on Christmas Eve, 1930. But he ran his heart out every step of the way. And those of us lucky enough to have shared a few miles at his side will forever remember his vigor, his encompassing warmth, and the way he loved all creatures great, and especially the small and powerless.


John J. Kelley at 52 in 1983. Photo courtesy Leo Kulinsky, whalesandwolves.com
Kelley, whom I first met in 1962, was the most sincere, humble, gentle, and authentic human being I have ever known. He was the first person I ever saw stop his car to help a turtle across the road, and he never ever, without exception, said a word about himself and his considerable accomplishments. He also never uttered a negative word about anyone else, with the possible exceptions of Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon.
Kelley was an extraordinary gentleman, yet also a radical free thinker. A friend, writer and marathoner Gail Kislevitz, called Kelley “the last rebellious man standing.” The phrase fits.
In his final days Kelley was surrounded by his three daughters–Julie, Kathleen, and Eileen–and a number of his grandchildren. He died from a melanoma that eventually spread to his lungs. Kelley’s wife Jacintha passed away in 2003.
Kelley’s athletic record is unparalleled among American distance runners. In 1957 he became the first and only member of the BAA running club to win the BAA Boston Marathon. In addition to his win, Kelley finished second at Boston five times. He won the 1959 Pan American Games Marathon, and captured eight consecutive USA National Marathon titles even though this event took place on the hot, hilly Yonkers course just four to five weeks after Boston. Kelley represented the U.S. in the 1956 and 1960 Olympic Marathons, with a best finish of 19th in the Rome Olympic race famously won by barefoot Abebe Bikila.
“Kelley didn’t like the limelight, and people don’t even know about him today,” says Bill Rodgers, four time Boston and New York City Marathon winner, “But his eight straight wins at Yonkers stand second only to Grete’s nine wins in New York, and it’s better in some ways. Grete’s longest streak was five straight.
“Kelley was at the epicenter of American marathoning. He was in the trenches doing the spade work for the likes of Frank Shorter and me and everyone who has come along since. Marathoning wasn’t a business then. There wasn’t any money, and it wasn’t entertainment. The runners had to put up with a public and sports media who basically knew nothing. Marathoners were treated as second-class athletes. But Kelley didn’t let that stop him. He was quiet but had tremendous drive. He was tough as nails.”


Kelley won 8 straight times at Yonkers, the national marathon championship. Illustration courtesy of Andy Yelenak, andyyelenak.com
In many ways, Kelley was the first modern American road runner. The generations before him–including greats like Clarence DeMar and “Old John” A. Kelley (no relation, despite the similar name and similar Boston Marathon histories)–came from working-class roots. So did Kelley, but he loved books and learning, and ultimately received a masters degree from Boston University.
Another big difference: Where his predecessors were relatively slow plodders, Kelley was fast. A high school prodigy in the mile in New London, CT, he was recruited to B.U. by an ambitious track coach who aimed to turn him into the next Glenn Cunningham. The plan didn’t work. Kelley had no taste for endless track repeats and races on a small oval. He yearned for greater adventure, less coaching, and more personal exploration. Midway through his college years, he was rising at 4:30 a.m. to run a dark, lonely 16-mile loop around the Charles River. He spent more time listening to Boston Marathon organizer/masseur/running-team coach Jock Semple than to his college coach, and ran his first two Bostons while still a college student.
"Kelley argued with his college coach Doug Raymond about the value of long, slow runs vs endless, gasping 440-yard sprints around the track,” notes Boston Marathon historian and author Tom Derderian. “Kelley’s fight against the conventional wisdom lifted him to the crest of the new wave of American distance running that led to Frank Shorter’s Olympic gold medal.”
The Boston Marathon's executive director Tom Grilk observes: "John J. Kelley's victory in the Boston Marathon wearing the unicorn of the BAA has been an inspiration to all of us at the BAA, as well as to generations of Boston and American runners. He ran and won at a time when there was no money to be won; a time when victory was sufficient unto itself. His legacy is that of striving for excellence for its own sake, and for the quiet satisfaction that it brings to those with a deep sense of personal values. I hope we will all continue to learn from that. It remains John's gift to us all."
At one point in the mid-1960s, Frank Shorter, Bill Rodgers, Jeff Galloway and I all lived in Connecticut within 50 miles of Kelley’s home in Mystic. Our proximity to Kelley, and our resulting marathon careers and assorted contributions to road running, is no coincidence. Kelley was first, the path-breaker. The rest of us followed in his footsteps. The entire American running boom thus traces a straight line to him, and the road he explored.
Even women. In the late 1950s, a curious teenage girl from Groton began noticing Kelley's workouts on Shennecossett Golf Course, near where she lived. The girl found herself entranced. Julia Chase's grandmother Mary Foulke Morrisson had been a well-known suffragette, and Julia had her share of the family's barrier-breaking blood. She eventually told Kelley that she enjoyed running, but didn’t know anything about it, and wondered if women could cover long distances.
Kelley said sure, and took her lightly under his wing (very lightly; that, of course, was his style), offering encouragement more than a schedule of workouts. In 1960, Chase attempted to enter Connecticut’s oldest and most famous race–the annual Thanksgiving Day 5-miler in Manchester–but officials rebuffed her, citing AAU rules. She tried again the next year. This time her persistence paid off, and Chase made national headlines when she became the first American woman to start and finish a road race.


Frank Shorter, me, Kelley. Photo courtesy Carol Goodrow.
This coming November, a half-century, a PhD (zoology; she became known as "the bat lady"), and an MD later, Dr. Julia Chase-Brand plans to run Manchester again. On the 50th anniversary of her first finish there (33:20), Chase-Brand, now a psychiatrist in New London, may wear the same Smith College gym suit she wore in 1961. Her running could never have happened without Kelley. He pointed the way; he was the wind at so many backs.
"At a time when women weren't allowed to run, Johnny accepted me into his home and running circle, with his friend George Terry," says Chase-Brand. "The two of them coached me, found me races to run, loaned me their track shoes when none were available for women, and urged me to directly challenge the ban on women's distance running. Sweet, funny, and a loving friend for 50 years – I'll miss him so."
Joan Benoit Samuelson made her breakthroughs nearly two decades later, but she also recalls that Kelley stood for much of what she cherishes most about running. "With a huge heart and basic core values, John J. represented what is so simple and good about running," says Samuelson.
In an era made recently famous by the “Mad Men” TV series on AMC, Kelley turned against the tide. It was a time of hyperactive expansion, mass consumption, and breakneck “progress,” but Kelley believed simpler and more natural was better. He didn’t just follow a different drummer. He heard rhythms and syncopations almost no one else detected, and chose to become a marathoner, an organic gardener, an English teacher, and an ardent environmentalist. Most days, he ran or bicycled the 5 miles to and from his high-school teaching job.
I had the incredible good fortune to meet Kelley when I was 16, attending Robert Fitch High in Groton, where he taught and coached cross-country. The son of a YMCA instructor, I had grown up playing the major American sports, and practiced hard to develop my skills in each. In fact, in my last year of organized baseball, I won the league batting championship, hitting .461.
But at some point the big three sports require more than skill. You need bulk and speed and power to reach the top. I was skinny and gangly. So in September of my junior year, I decided to try cross-country running. That’s when I crossed paths with Kelley.
After a predictably mediocre first race (wearing bowling shoes), I was dry-heaving under the football bleachers when I felt a firm hug around my shoulders. It was Kelley, almost six inches shorter than me. “You ran great today, Amby,” he said. “You’ve got real potential in this sport.”
“Bullshit,” I thought to myself.
But Kelley’s voice and steady gaze were so assuring, so genuine, that I eventually came to believe him. That first cross-country race and the relationship I soon developed with


Post-1968 Boston Marathon. I couldn't be happier than to have Kelleys on both sides.
Kelley made all the difference in my life–not just in sports, but even more so in other circles of life. He was an All-American, all-areas inspiration. (Here’s the Runner’s World Magazine story I wrote about Kelley in 2007 to honor the 50th anniversary of his Boston victory.)
For many years, Kelley received no pay for the extra, after-hours work and travel associated with coaching. He feared the reprisal of the amateur-sports henchmen. At the end of my first cross-country season, when I turned up to collect my prized varsity-letter certificate, I watched in amazement as Kelley ran the document through his manual typewriter. He carefully XXXX’d out “Coach” and wrote in “Advisor.” At the time, I had no idea what he was doing, or why. I didn't understand that "coach" was, according to some, a verboten term invoking an image of lower-class, professional laborers who threatened the essence of the amateur ideal.
Now and again, I wanted more from Kelley than he was willing to deliver. As I improved and raised my sights, I naturally asked him what it would take to win the Boston Marathon or make an Olympic team. He never answered, at least not with the magical training plan or secret, endurance-building diet I thought I needed. Kelley disdained gurus, prophets, cults, religions, bureaucrats, self-assigned “experts,” and all purveyors of pablum, bromides and snake oil. On occasion, he left me feeling more adrift than I wanted to feel.
Nonetheless, Kelley was always there when I needed him. We talked endlessly (well, he talked; I listened), and it seemed that we ran a million miles together. Many years later I realized, of course, that he had given me more than a recipe for success. He had given me himself, and he had also set me free.


Kelley at a recent Boston Marathon. Courtesy Rich Benyo, marathonandbeyond.com
In the turbulent late 1960s and early 1970s, the Kelley household at 415 Pequot Ave. became the unofficial headquarters for all the disaffected athlete and artist types in Southeastern Connecticut. Almost nightly, the tiny house–which included John and his wife, Jacintha ("Jess"), three young daughters, several litters of kittens, and a mangy dog or two–swelled to include runners, cyclists, poets, guitar strummers, actors, and gays. While Jess poured gallons of tea and served cakes and cookies, Kelley, amply endowed with the Irish gift for gab, held forth on the evils of authority, bureaucracy, government, powerseekers, capitalism, chemicals, plastics, pesticides, the military-industrial complex and his favorite target, “the infernal combustion engine.” He quoted Thoreau constantly, and considered civil disobedience man’s greatest invention and most honorable pursuit.
While Kelley mused about all things considerable, loud scratchy music played on the cheap stereo. He favored Jagger/Richards over Lennon/McCartney, Pete Seeger over John Denver, and Bob Dylan over everyone. Dylan was a constant in the household; Kelley seemed to find him a kindred spirit.
He returned over and over again to Dylan's “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” [“Everybody must get stoned”]. This isn’t a song about drugs or protest. It’s much darker. Kelley had lived this song.
It’s not easy going against the mainstream. It doesn’t build your resume, pay the rent, or gain you friends in high places. Kelley was intensely private, but thin-skinned, and he never understood why townspeople felt compelled to tell him he was stupid for all that running. And how could porky, beer-swilling Boston sportswriters criticize him for finishing second behind Finns, and Swedes, and Japanese runners? Dylan had an explanation.
“Well, they’ll stone you when you’re trying to be so good.
They’ll stone you when you’re walking ’long the street.
Well, they’ll stone you and say that it’s the end.
Then they’ll stone you and then they’ll come back again.”
The evenings at 415 Pequot would reach their ritualistic peak at about 9:30 p.m. when Kelley, a perennial early-riser, collapsed onto the tiny living-room floor, curled into a fetal position, and fell asleep. This signalled us it was time to leave, so one-by-one we’d begin to tip-toe over his inert body. But somehow, even with closed eyes, Kelley would detect the motion and reach up to grab the nearest ankle. “Don’t go, don’t go,” he’d wail. “Stay a little longer, and keep Jess company.”
Kelley had a bleak, fatalistic world view, no doubt about it. He read Silent Spring and Population Bomb, and nodded sadly with Rachel Carson and Paul and Anne Ehrlich. Humans were large-brained animals, he often pointed, but there was conflicting evidence about the brain's actual intelligence. He thought the animal part of our nature was probably more important than the brain part. He believed we’d be better off if we followed our instincts. Weren’t our big brains the reason for ethnic disputes, politics, wars, corporate greed, and ecological disasters?


Kelley races Eino Oksanen, Finland, in 1961 Boston Marathon. Result: Oksanen, first; Kelley, second. Courtesy Boston Marathon.
If Kelley sounds angry, he never acted that way. Shouting, organizing, and rabble-rousing–these simply weren’t part of his nature. Two overreaching passions sustained him: running and literature. He read and enjoyed everything: Joyce and Shakespeare, Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut, Roger Bannister and Larry Flynt (publisher of Hustler magazine). I remember my amazement a few years back when I caught him reading Flynt’s autobiography, An Unseemly Man. I immediately set to chiding him.
“Oh, no, Amby,” he retorted. “Flynt’s a good man who’s had a hard life. He’s a protector of our rights. He got sued constantly, he was shot by a madman, and he kept on fighting.”
Every run with Kelley was a unique escapade. The workouts began in his backyard. We had to scramble through briar patches, and risked scraping our knees on a stone wall before reaching a short path in tree-thick Pequot Woods. Why not walk down the driveway, and begin runnng on clear asphalt? Because that option held absolutely no appeal to Kelley.
On 10-, 14- and 18-milers, we turned off road at every occasion, a half-mile here, a mile there, to follow narrow trails, ford streams, and run through oak glens. Wherever there was grass or roots underfoot, wherever the snow drifted highest, wherever the wind blew fiercest, that's where Kelley wanted to be. He loved weather–all of it.
Eventually we’d reach River Road in Old Mystic, and the pace would rachet down dramatically. Four miles to go. The group run now became a survival-of-the-fittest contest. Kelley flew down River Road, the rest of us giving chase. Nearly three miles later, we turned right on Clift St. (not Cliff, though that would be an accurate descriptor), and climbed straight up for 700 yards (and 160 vertical feet). At the top, we plunged again into the tree-covered darkness of Pequot Woods.
The last mile to Kelley’s house was an unbroken mix of rocks, streams, hidden trails, fallen logs, and brambles. The workout ended with another encounter of backyard stone wall and briar patches. It was rare to finish without bloodied legs.
Kelley was always first home. By the time I got to his backyard, worn and bedraggled, he had tossed off his singlet, grabbed a pitchfork, and commenced to working the compost pile with an energy-output equal to the run. The first time I saw the hundreds of fat, squirming earthworms in his compost, I recoiled in horror.
All Kelley’s workouts started behind schedule, as did everything else in his life. He was the worst trip planner imaginable. In 1963, the fall of my senior year in high school, a teammate and I qualified for the New England Cross Country Championships in Burlington, VT. Kelley concocted an impossible itinerary. First, he wouldn’t let us get started until we had completed a full day of classes. Then we drove to a Boston suburb to have an Italian dinner prepared by the mother of Al Confalone, a Kelley teammate on the BAA running club. (These guys might have been ahead of Ron Hill and others on the carbo-loading curve.) After eating, socializing, eating some more, (and socializing some more), we finally hit the road again.
We pulled into our Burlington hotel at 4 a.m. Three hours later, my teammate and I had to shake off the cobwebs, get up for a light breakfast, and begin our pre-race warmup. I have no memories of the actual competition. I am brimming with mental snapshots of the harrowing trip.


Tired. After a 1960s New England road race somewhere. Courtesy Hockomock Swamp Rat/Peter Wallan.
A few years later, Kelley decided that we should run the annual Columbus Day road race in Manchester, NH. Afterward, we would drive north for an overnight, and the next morning hike up Mount Washington, his alltime favorite activity. We wouldn’t need a motel reservation or anything; we’d just find one en route to Mount Washington.
Can you say “foliage season?” After striking out at a dozen or more motels, we finally reached the parking lot across from the Mount Washington auto road. With no other options, Kelley and I let Jess and the three girls array themselves in the car. We stepped outside, wrapped ourselves in our running sweatsuits, and picked out a soft patch of grass. I still shiver every time I recall the avalanche of cold, damp air that cascaded down the mountainsides that night to congeal us in its frosty grasp.
When Hal Higdon wrote his classic 1966 tale of New England summer road racing for Sports Illustrated, he titled it “Has Anyone Here Seen Kelley?” The title worked on several levels. For one, it was a given that no one had seen Kelley, because he was always the last to arrive at a race.
I’m half-German and at least half-if-not-fully-crazed about lists, schedules, and timeliness. As soon as I came into a car of my own, I gave up driving to races with Kelley. I just couldn’t tolerate the last-minute pressure. I had too often changed into my racing shorts in the backseat, asking Jess and the girls to look away, when we were still 10 miles distant from a start line with 15 minutes ’til gun time. I don’t know how many races Kelley missed entirely in his life, but there must have been several.
In the early 1980s, Kelley became the first runner I knew to try a triathlon. Fit, water-worthy, and an enthusiastic cyclist, he saw the tri-event as a new frontier. The result was pitifully comic. The smallest and thinnest of all competitors, he dove off Groton Long Point’s East Dock and began stroking inland toward Esker Point, a half-mile distant. However, there was a modest out-current, and it soon developed that Kelley was swimming backwards. Organizers had to dispatch a motorboat to haul him out of Long Island Sound before he was swept away.
Fifteen years earlier, we had begun our annual New Year’s Day lark–a combination 5-mile run and Long Island Sound water frolic. It always began at 415 Pequot Ave. Why? Because everything began there. Kelley rarely joined in, however. He felt that New Year’s Eve and Day already had too many social frenzies.


Kelley and one of his best friends. Photo courtesy Gail Kislevitz.
His own favorite Jan. 1 activity was a long woodsy trek, through deep snow if possible, with one of the dogs. Kelley was a dog man through and through. No day was complete without several meandering walks with one of his constant companions.
Kelley married Jess in the winter of 1953 while both were still college students. That night he ran on B.U.’s 4 x 800-meter relay team in Boston Garden. While he raced around the tight, splintered boards, the P.A. system played “Here Comes The Bride.” God, I wish I had been there to witness that. I often kidded him about it anyway.
Following graduation, Kelley taught English and reading to non-college-bound high school students for several decades. It was an occupation for which he was massively unsuited, possessing not a disciplinary strand of DNA in his entire genetic makeup. Eventually he quit to drive a taxi for his brother-in-law, and to pursue freelance writing for outfits with minuscule budgets. With a friend, Tom Murphy, he co-wrote Just Call Me Jock, the biography of Jock Semple.
In 1980, Jess found a well-to-do investor-partner, and together they opened a running store named “Kelley’s Pace” in a small, touristy shopping center called Olde Mystick Village. Jess hoped the family might finally make a dime or two from her husband’s running fame, but several bad embezzlements ruined the dream. After his wife's death, Kelley worked substantial hours at the store that bears his name, but in which he held only a small share.
Of course, Kelley was used to living on nothing. I don’t remember that he ever took his family on a proper vacation. A Friday-night pizza dinner downtown was about as lavish as it got. When I think back, I can’t imagine how he and Jess managed to dole out all the tea and cookies. But they never did so begrudgingly, I can assure you of that. It was the best, happiest, most chaotic kitchen-living room in the world. We all had a blast.
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IN A COUPLE OF DAYS I'LL RETURN TO MYSTIC for Kelley’s funeral. Soon as I arrive, I'm heading over to gaze at 415 Pequot. You can’t miss it. Mystic is a well-heeled community, with nicely trimmed and landscaped yards. Except for 415 Pequot.
I seem to recall that 1966 was the first year Kelley bought a live Christmas tree. Several months later, he transplanted the young pine to the front yard. He did the same the next year, and many years thereafter. Today, the front yard at 415 Pequot is an evergreen forest, completely devoid of grass and artifice.
Kelley never intended to create a living memorial to himself. He just wanted to celebrate Christmas without killing a tree. But when I visit and look at those trees, I’ll remember all the jaunts and hijinx and good times we shared. Mostly I’ll wonder at the miracle that one lone individual could have lived with so many right values so far ahead of everyone else.
Kelley cherished trees and animals, no doubt about it. But more than anything, he loved the people around him–family, friends, artists, fellow athletes, and revolutionaries of every stripe. And we loved him back. It was easy to recognize that John Joseph Kelley was an American original. I didn’t know anyone else like him, and couldn’t imagine another. I still don’t, and can’t.



Four Boston Marathon winners. Courtesy Andy Yelenak, runningpast.com
More: Kelley's induction speech, including photo with Doris Brown Heritage, 2002 National Distance Running Hall of Fame.
Great reminiscence from Steve Fagin, a local runner/writer in Mystic, CT, who knew Kelley well.
Excellent NY Times obit from track writer Frank Litsky.
Hartford Courant sports feature writer Lori Riley calls how Kelley changed her flat tire.
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Article taken from Footloose - http://footloose.runnersworld.com
URL to article: http://footloose.runnersworld.com/2011/08/john-j-kelley-rip-1930-2011-1957-boston-marathon-winner-americas-first-modern-road-runner.html