You said I was weak. You said I couldn’t do it. Thank you.
You gave me everything I needed to prove you wrong.
– Steve Prefontaine
As a matter of introduction, I can simply say, these exceptional people all inspired me personally and for those who offered friendship, I am honored. – JDW.
The Original Gangsters Of Running (Volume 3)
- 1. Browning Ross
- 2. Dr. Jack Scaff
- 3. Lee Fidler
- 4. Bill Gookin
- 5. Susan Henderson
- 6. Janet Heinonen
- 7. Dan Dillon
- 8. Boston Marathon Volunteers
- 9. Roy Benson
- 10. Rick Bayko
- 11. Rod Dixon
- 12. Kenny Moore
- 13. Kenny Moore Creative Writing Fellowship Endowment Fund
- 14. Emil Zatopek
- 15. Gary Tuttle
- 16. Zellah & Jerry Swartsley
- 17. Laurel James
- 18. Mike Fanelli
- 19. Women Running A Full Life (Stars of the Pacific Northwest)
- 20. Beth Bonner
- 21. Bob Schul Remembered
- 22. Sara Mae Berman
- 23. Mike Roche
- 24. Where’s Don’s Bronze???
- 25. Links to OGORs Volumes One & Two
Original Gangsters Of Running (Browning Ross)
And while the hearse was delivering legendary Browning Ross to his final resting place, members of the Gloucester Catholic High School track team he coached so proudly jogged alongside in a tear-provoking, gut-wrenching tribute.
– Gloucester City News
I suspect my earliest running journalism appeared in Browning Ross’ Long Distance Log. If I wasn’t among the world’s biggest knuckleheads, that should have put me on a course of happiness, enjoyment and fulfillment. But that was not my style in the 1970s.
He was classy, I remember, and patient and inspirational.
Browning Ross, 74, Founder Of Road Runners
By Frank Litsky for The New York Times. April 30, 1998.
Browning Ross, a two-time Olympian who started America’s first magazine for runners and then founded the organization that promoted the development of distance running in the United States, died on Monday, a day after his 74th birthday.
On Monday, after his usual three-mile morning run near his home in Woodbury in southwestern New Jersey, he got into his car and put it in reverse. Minutes later, when a neighbor noticed that the car had rolled into another, the engine still running, the police were called.
They found Ross unconscious, and he could not be resuscitated. His daughter Barbara Knoblock said the death certificate listed the cause of death as a heart attack.
Harrison Browning (Brownie) Ross, a native of Woodbury, had a distinguished running career. But he made a bigger mark as a visionary in an era when American distance runners had few races each year.
In 1957, borrowing an idea he had encountered in England, he formed the Philadelphia Road Runners Club.
”That gave us weekly races, maybe only 20 or so runners per race, but the opportunity was there,” said Tom Osler of Glassboro, N.J., a charter member of the club. ”For years, it was the way distance runners developed.”
Early in 1958, Ross expanded the one-city club into a national organization by founding the Road Runners Club of America as an alternative to the Amateur Athletic Union and its limited program for distance runners. The Road Runners Club of America now has 180,000 members in 625 clubs, 32,500 members in New York City alone.
In 1957, Ross also started the Long Distance Log, which began as a mimeographed newsletter for 150 subscribers and became a printed magazine before it ceased publication in 1975. When he kept losing money on the magazine, he started selling running shoes out of the trunk of his car to pay the magazine’s bills.
At a time when the sport was overwhelmingly amateur, the A.A.U., then the national governing body of track and field, said Ross was capitalizing on his athletic fame and ruled him a professional. Bert Nelson, the publisher of Track and Field News, called the A.A.U.’s action ”pathetically absurd” and ”completely ridiculous.”
Ross held no grudges. He later served as chairman of the A.A.U.’s national long-distance running committee and also won eight A.A.U. national titles.
His track career began as a high school pole-vaulter, but he soon turned to running. He served in the Army during World War II, and he recalled that three days after Rome fell to the Allies in 1944, he ran there in the hastily arranged Allied Olympics, an unofficial competition.
After the war, he entered Villanova University. In the 3,000-meter steeplechase in the 1948 London Olympics, he finished seventh. In the 1951 Pan American Games in Buenos Aires, he placed first in the 1,500 meters, second in the steeplechase and fourth in the 5,000 meters. In the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, he was a member of the United States team but sprained an ankle on a training run and did not qualify for the steeplechase final.
At various times, he taught history at high schools in Woodbury and Camden and conducted youth programs at the Penns Grove (N.J.) Y.M.C.A. Since 1969, he coached track and cross-country at Gloucester Catholic High School.
He is survived by his wife, Rosemarie; a son, Barry, of Cologne, N.J.; two daughters, Ms. Knoblock and Bonnie Ross, both of West Deptford, N.J.; a brother, Gerald, of Woodbury, and four grandchildren.
Although Ross no longer ran seriously, he kept busy organizing more than a dozen races, most of them informal and including youngsters. As Emily McDonough, a 15-year-old high school sophomore who competed in several of his races, told Runner’s World magazine, ”His friendly smile and encouraging words remind us that the greatest gift running has to offer is satisfaction.”
Father Ross By Joe Henderson
RUNNING COMMENTARY 731
I didn’t want to believe the news when it first reached me third-hand. But the source was too good a reporter to pass along an unfounded rumor this terrible.
Browning Ross was dead. A cop found him in his parked car after his usual morning three-mile run near his home in Woodbury, New Jersey.
A heart attack was blamed for his death a day after his 74th birthday. He died doing what he had lived.
If asked to name the fathers of modern U.S. road racing, I’d think first of Browning Ross. He was a terrific runner himself. He ran in two Olympics, 1948 and ’52, as a steeplechaser… won the 1951 Pan-American Games in the 1500… placed second in the steeple and fourth in the 5000… won a national cross-country title and more on the roads than he could remember.
A runner only works for his own good, though, and Browning worked for the good of all who ran. He never sought glory for his publishing and organizing, never was widely celebrated for it, and probably never realized the breadth and depth of his contributions.
In 1957 he started a magazine. Long Distance Log was the first to link the small and scattered band of road racers. Without his LDL there might never have been a Runner’s World, because he showed the future publisher and first editor what was possible. The Log faded out, with never a bitter public word from Browning, as RW found its legs in the early 1970s.
In 1958 he arranged a meeting in a New York City hotel room that led to formation of the Road Runners Club of America. There would have been an RRCA without him, but it wouldn’t have arrived as soon or had the voice that his magazine gave the fledgling club.
He served as chairman of the AAU long-distance committee. He championed women’s running at a time when the AAU’s geezers wanted to keep the sport all-male.
I saw him at the 1970 national convention in San Francisco. He chaired the meeting at which an official called women’s marathoning “a lark for housewives with too much time on their hands.” Browning rolled his eyes at that.
Mainly, though, Browning Ross acted locally. He coached at high schools, he operated a running store, and always he organized races.
He might hold the world record for number of events conducted. From his 20s through his last days he averaged at least one race a month.
The May 1998 issue of Runner’s World honored him, for his ongoing race directing, with its Golden Shoe Award. This was one of the few times his picture ever appeared in the magazine to which he could claim parenthood.
In spring 1998 the South Jersey Athletic Club gave him a tribute dinner for lifelong contributions. Somehow his teammates knew that it was time.
Sadly, my tributes were posthumous. I carried his initials on my cap bill in my next marathon. I dedicated my next book, Best Runs, to him.
You see, he wasn’t just a father of the modern sport. He was one of my own running fathers.
His magazine, which I first read in 1959, turned me toward longer running. My first words in a running publication appeared as a 1961 letter in Long Distance Log.
He offered me, someone he’d never seen and had talked with only by mail, a job at his summer camp and a place to live in 1964. I’ve always regretted turning him down.
He greeted me at my first marathon, Boston 1967, and introduced me to Tom Osler. Browning promoted Osler’s mini-classic, The Conditioning of Distance Runners, that same year — which inspired my booklet, LSD, a term I lifted from the pages of the Log.
I owe much to him. We all do, and can make partial payment by remembering him.
Much the same could be said about remembering Joe Henderson. Who was still with us, last I checked. Which was Friday. We all owe both of them.
Since 1982 Joe has written a newsletter, Running Commentary. A new issue appears here each week, and material is archived. He is way behind. Last I checked.
Browning Ross: Father Of American Distance Running
by Jack Heath
Browning Ross was a High School National Champion Miler. He served in the Navy and then became an NCAA Champion at Villanova University. Browning was a two-time Olympian, a gold medal winner at the Pan Am Games and an 8-time National Champion runner. Then his contributions to American distance running really started. He founded the Road Runners Club of America which led to the running boom in the 1970’s. He started the first national running magazine, the Long Distance Log and he directed thousands of races.
He also coached the US International Cross-Country team and was a successful high school and college coach. He overcame resistance in his attempt to change running for the better. His efforts provided more opportunities for all runners that are enjoyed today.
He did it all with a humility and sense of humor that make for a fascinating true story.
