Latest Boston Marathon tome is leader of pack

BOSTON MARATHON: The History of the World’s Premier Running Event, by Tom Derderian, Human Kinetics Publishers (Box 5076, Champaign, Ill.), 594 pages, $21.95.

Author Tom Derderian has researched with a champion’s diligence, thoroughness and unwavering concern for detail, and run his marathonlike, book-writing race with a reverence for tradition and a spiritedness that brings legends to life. The resulting book is a winner at the finish line, helping to commemorate and celebrate runners such as DeMar and the Kelleys, Kyriakides and Cote, Rodgers and Maine’s own Benoit-Samuelson, Seko and Hussein.

To runners and those who follow the history of running, these names are magical. A book was needed which celebrates their achievements. Derderian, a former world-class runner himself with a 2-hour, 17-minute personal best in the marathon, has come up with a world-class effort in illuminating not only the glory of the greats, but the extraordinary efforts of others in the pack.

Indeed, the author has dedicated the tome “to those who tried and tried again,” and many of his most fascinating and inspirational profiles focus on some of these courageous runners, not all of whom were rewarded with victory.

In penning this volume about the world’s oldest (1897) continuing 26.2-mile footrace, Derderian has rocketed to the forefront with the most vital book ever written on the Boston Marathon. Derderian’s book was badly needed: Boston Globe editor Jerry Nason published a tiny pamphlet with just capsules of each year. Then baseball writer Joe Falls published a so-called “history” which was as insulting in tone (dwelling ad nauseam on runners’ agony and suffering) as it was inaccurate in fact (four-time winner Rodgers’ name is Bill, not “Will”!). The Ray Hosler-edited book is mostly essays about contemporary figures and races.

Derderian’s book, however, is the mixed writing bag that he, or anyone else attempting this feat, would be left holding. All of the accounts before World War II, and many of them before the late 1960s, are propelled by Derderian’s scrutiny of the Boston newspapers (largely the Boston Globe and the old Boston Post). You can’t interview the dead, and Derderian is forced to try to bring many of his profiles to life through crisp summarizing and interpretive analysis alone. The best of these involve the accounts where Derderian has successfully unearthed details about the rest of a runner’s life, after success or failure at Boston.

One of the most poignant of these is the story of 1914 winner Jimmy Duffy of Canada, the Irish-born “rambunctious” reveler whose first words upon crossing the finish line were: “Give me a cigarette.” His next request was for a beer. One year later, instead of defending his title on April 19th in Boston, he was in a trench in Belgium with fellow members of the Canadian 16th Battalion facing an overwhelming German force. On April 22, 1915, Jimmy Duffy ran his last steps, full tilt into a hail of German bullets on a suicidal mission. Of the 300 soldiers in his unit, only 27 survived.

Then there is the stirringly uplifting story of the Greek runner Stylianos Kyriakides, who came to Boston in 1946 not to win for himself but to draw attention to his nation of starving people. His “win or die” determination provided victory, and he used the winner’s platform to plead for U.S. and world aid for war-ravaged Greece.

Derderian also provides a colorful portrait of Maine’s too-often ignored greatest male runner, Andrew Sockalexis of Indian Island, fourth-place finisher in the Olympic Games of 1912. Narrowly beaten for first place in the 1912 Boston Marathon, Sockalexis suffered a second straight, heart-breaking second-place finish in 1913 when he fell just short with his late spurt.

For his contemporary profiles, Derderian has a palette with many more colors to use to create his portraits, not the least of which is his intimate knowledge of many of the personalities, American and foreign, to capture attention at Boston in the last 30 to 35 years.

In these studies we have ample evidence of extensive interviewing and on-the-spot observations which lead to many rich, full-bodied characterizations: John Kelley “the Younger,” the engaging literary man who so heroically wore the mantle of “America’s only hope” for so many years as the stellar international fields grew and grew; Bill Rodgers, nervously running to victory in 1980 in the face of a death threat, provoked because of Rodgers’ courageous, outspoken opposition to Jimmy Carter’s boycott of the 1980 Olympics; the painful struggle of Patti Lyons, who stopped eating doughnuts by the dozen, smoking cigarettes by the box, and drinking beer by the six-pack to become a great runner, only to suffer the heartbreak of three straight second-place finishes.

For all the startling details and wonderful insights Derderian provides for the moderns, my favorite profiles dealt with the early “plodders,” as they were called. They don’t often get the respect they deserve. Poor, working-class men who spent long, hard employment days on their feet, they trained in the dark, had terrible footwear and were offered little in incentives to race.

After reading Clarence DeMar’s wonderful 1937 autobiography, “Marathon” (I highly recommend this — the Bangor Public Library has it), and now Derderian’s book, I’ve lost all that arrogance which led me to believe that, from Abebe Bikila to the current superstars, I’ve seen all the greatest runners in action.

DeMar and many of the early runners Derderian brings to life in his nearly 600-page history (with an excellent array of pictures), I now believe, would have been great runners in any era. And such a perspective makes the glory and the tradition of the Boston Marathon even richer and more special than it was before.

Ed Rice lives in Brewer and has run three Boston Marathons.