There's no hiding his greatness

Sunday, October 30, 2005

COLUMN: Steve Solloway

CHELSEA - The men standing behind the counter at Soule's Auto Supply were dumbfounded.

A stranger had just walked into their business an hour before quitting time Friday asking to see Ralph Thomas. The visit had nothing to do with brake rotors or fan belts.

I wanted to talk to the man who won hundreds of road races. The man who outraced a freight train to a railroad crossing. The man who dared others to run with him and punished them when they tried.

The man who was inducted into the Maine Running Hall of Fame in its first year and the Maine Sports Hall of Fame.

The countermen stared at me. Did I mean their Ralph, the old guy who was out delivering parts to a customer? That Ralph?

Hey, it happens. One year you're rated as one of the best marathon runners in the U.S. and 30 years later you're a senior citizen with crumbling knees.

You don't talk about your past and virtually no one asks. You gave away the trophies and packed away the scrapbooks.

You go to the state high school cross country championships some years and are content to simply be a face in the crowd. One of those years, you stepped out from under a pine tree to ask if the slender runner in the Edward Little uniform was Ben Fletcher. It was.

"I ran against his father. He was quite a man. Could you introduce me to his son?"

Ralph Thomas should need no introductions. Judging from the reaction of his co-workers, apparently he does.

Thomas walked through the door of Soule's Auto Supply late Friday afternoon and shot me a puzzled look. What was I doing there and what was I saying about him?

I saw him last February at the high school basketball tournaments in Augusta, using a railing to help him walk along the upper level of the civic center.

It was a sad sight. Thomas never carried more than 140 pounds on his muscular 5-foot-5 frame. He had run the race to the top of Mt. Washington twice, finishing second both times. He ran the Boston Marathon five times. He says his best finish was 55th. Among thousands.

But with each stride, he wore down the cartilage in his knees. Truth be told, he played football in his youth until a doctor suggested he stop. His knees hurt then from torn cartilage.

"The doc said I could run until I was in my late 30s," said Thomas. "I got a few more good years in."

In 1975 he was ranked sixth among U.S. marathoners by the magazine Runners World. He was invited to the Olympic trials a year later. At the age of 41, he was the oldest.

He wasn't among the three to make the U.S. Olympic team. "I didn't have a good race," said Thomas. "Marathoning wasn't my thing then. They're so damn iffy. You could feel great and run lousy."

Last winter, bone was rubbing on bone when he walked. "I got used to it, but they ached something terrible when I walked. I knew what had to be done, but I kept putting it off."

He got his artificial knees in April. Titanium and plastic enable him to walk pain-free.

He is 70 years old and still draws a paycheck. His is a life of hard work. At the height of his relatively short, 10-year career, he was grabbing chickens, four or five at a time, throwing them into cages.

When his truck was full, he drove to one of the processors that made up Maine's poultry industry back in the 1970s. It was smelly, exhausting work and he did it at night. He trained during the day.

He'd show up at races around New England, sometimes at the last minute, his family in tow. He'd run in cutoff shirts and cutoff shorts. Once he ran in mismatched shoes.

It happened at the Yarmouth Clam Festival, remembers Dick Goodie, the race director.

"Ralph only had one shoe, a size 9," said Goodie. "The only shoe he could borrow was a size 8. That's how he ran. He blew everybody away and blistered his foot.

"He was a phenom in his day. He had a mental toughness that he passed on to the younger runners. He and Kenny Flanders used to sweep the streets with the other runners."

Thomas ran to win. That's why he outran the freight train of two engines and several flatcars loaded with pulpwood on a track near Colby College. Fred Judkins, the race leader, made it across that day in 1979.

Thomas, about 100 yards behind, had to decide. Should be pull up or speed up, guessing that he'd beat the train. It was his only chance to beat Judkins. He beat both.

"I'm not in it for the trophies or the rah-rah or any of that (stuff)," he said once. In fact, he recycled his hundreds of trophies, convincing race promoter Brian Gillespie to come to his home in Randolph to take them away.

"My ego didn't need me looking at 'em," said Thomas. "All he had to do was take my name off. But you know, I ran in one of his races and I won. I won the same trophy twice."

He said he had to miss this year's state cross country championships, which ran Saturday at Leavitt High in Turner. He had to work.

That's too bad. Maybe this time he wouldn't need an introduction.

Staff Writer Steve Solloway can be contacted at 791-6412 or at:

ssolloway@pressherald.com

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