June 4, 2021
Today I received an email from Gary Corbitt with a link to another upcoming anniversary. In two days it will be the 55th anniversary of a remarkable 2 mile relay held in New York City between Boys High of Brooklyn, NY and Andrew Jackson High of Queens, NY. Both teams took it down to the wire with times bettering the national high school record. They recorded 7:35.6 and the win was granted to Andrew Jackson.
P.S. If you want a great source to historic information on running go to Gary's website listed below. George Brose
Here is Gary's note to me and the link to that story by Marc Bloom.
Marc Bloom's "Me and Julio Down by the School Track" Link
Hi George: Marc Bloom has asked me to post his 1986 The Runner Magazine article “Me and Julio Down by The School Track” on my father’s website tedcorbitt.com. The 55th anniversary is Monday, June 7th for this historic 2 Mile Relay High School record setting race. Below is Marc's intro and a link to the article: Best Wishes!
Gary Marc Bloom’s Classic Article about the Historic New York City High School 2 Mile Relay Race in 1966
By Marc Bloom On June 7, 1966, two New York City teams--Boys High of Brooklyn and Andrew Jackson of Queens--shattered the national high school record for the two-mile relay by running to a virtual dead heat in 7:35.6, a race many consider among the greatest, if not the greatest ever run. Jackson was declared the winner, as both schools were given the same time, on the level of what many leading college teams were running then. As a budding journalist of 19 present that Wednesday afternoon at the St. John's University track (I was a one-man press corps that day), I knew the athletes and two coaches well and had a role in staging the event. All of the athletes, and one of the two coaches, was Black. The race, among so many that season of special note, found a place in my heart and propelled my interest in what would become a 56-year track writing career. It also highlighted the breakthrough of young Black athletes in the middle-distances; many of the youngsters excelled in the mile, two-mile and cross-country as well. In June, 1986, on the 20th anniversary of the record (it took 35 years for the record to come down, in 2001), I was editor of The Runner magazine and published a 16,000-word story that brought the historic event back to life. I'd spent months locating the athletes and coaches and conducting numerous interviews in my research. It was a labor of love, and the response was extraordinary. The magazine was inundated with hundreds of letters of appreciation, and to this day people still come up to me at meets wanting to discuss the race and story. In 2016, I helped organize a 50th anniversary celebration at Coogan's restaurant near the Armory track center in upper Manhattan. The place was packed with luminaries, memories were shared and the surviving protagonists feted. None of The Runner articles (we published from 1978 to 1987; my longtime friend and colleague George Hirsch was founder and publisher), as far as I know, are on-line. With the event's 55th anniversary coming up on June 7, 2021, I wanted to try and give the story a wider audience and asked Gary Corbitt if he would like to post it on his "Ted Corbitt" website www.tedcorbitt.com, which I considered an ideal platform on which to honor athletes and coaches who have meant so much historically to the track community, and to me personally. Gary welcomed the idea, and so the story appears at this link... (Link is above)
By Marc Bloom
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