February 2015 Track and Field Writers of President’s Message America NYC Welcomes TAFWA TAFWA finally made its way to the Big Apple with our inaugural event in New York (Founded June 7, 1973) City on Thursday evening, Feb. 12, two days prior to the 108th Millrose Games. A good time was had by all. PRESIDENT Jack Pfeifer, 6129 N. Lovely St., Portland, OR About 40 people – members, members-to-be, special guests – mostly filled the famous 97203. Office/home: 917- 579-5392. Email: back room at Coogan’s Restaurant, 168th and Broadway in Washington Heights, [email protected] around the corner from the Armory, where Millrose is now held. The restaurant has several signature track items – a sign that reads “Coogan’s – Home of New YorkTrack VICE PRESIDENT Doug Binder. Email: [email protected]. Phone: 503-913-4191. TREASURER In this issue: Tom Casacky, P.O. Box 4288, Napa, CA 94558. Phone: 818-321-3234. Email: [email protected] SECRETARY/ AWARDS CHAIR Don Kopriva, 5327 New- P. 1 President’s Message port Drive, Lisle IL 60532. P. 4 Coogans and NYC Welcome TAFWA Event Home: 630-960-3049. Cell: 630-712-2710. P. 4 TAFWA Awards in Broadcasting, Documentary and Email: donkopriva777@ aol.com Writing Announced P. 10 Membership Dues Reminder NEWSLETTER EDITOR Kim Spir, University of P. 11 Becca Gillespy Peter Says It All: Portland, 5000 N. Willamette Blvd., “This Latest Letter from USATF Makes Me Sick” Portland, OR 97203. P. 13 USATF’s Latest Letter Work: 503-943-7314. Email: kim.spir@gmail. P. 16 Bob Hersh’s Response to USATF com P. 20 Catching Up With Anna Rohrer FAST P. 24 Alexi Pappas Meets Obama Dave Johnson. Email: [email protected] P. 28 Smoke It Phone: 215-898-6145. P. 32 Mexico’s Mario Vazquez Raña WEBMASTER P. 34 USATF Says “Cease and Desist” to A New England Running Club Michael McLaughlin. Email: supamac@comcast. P. 35 Partial Fixtures List net. Phone: 815-529- 8454. Writers” and an entire wall covered with the framed covers of every Sports Illustrated cover with a track and field theme. There are about 60 of them, though most were before 1980. There’s no more fitting space in America to have a track get-together. (There is nothing comparable even in Eugene, with the possible exception of Track Town Pizza, the emporium on Franklin Boule- vard.) That motif is the brainchild of Coogan’s owner, Peter Walsh, our host for the evening. Walsh also selects the annual Armory Book Award and thus made that presentation in person, in his in- imitable way, though it did not include an accompanying song, just an off-color story about a rabbi and a priest. (Later in the evening, Craig Silver of CBS told a similar story, the perfect coda to a splendid evening out on the town in the big city.) The placement of our first event in New York was in part to allow some of our members who no longer venture out as far as Eugene, Ore., to participate; to interest new members from the Northeast, and to be able to recog- nize Easterners so that they can be on hand in person. This meant that both Walsh and our Nancy Beffa could make their presentations in person, though to be fair Walsh did make his debut trip to Eugene several years ago and Beffa promised to get to Oregon as well this June. Beffa gave the Bud Greenspan Memorial Award for documentary filmmaking to “Run Free: The True Story of Caballo Blanco” to the team of Maria Walton, Sterling Noren, Leslie Gaines and Heather Nicholson, who ironically live far away in Seattle, Wash. We hope to have them in attendance in June at our Spring Banquet dur- ing the NCAA Championships, to accept in person. Walsh presented the book award to Jack D. Welch, of Florida, for When Running was Young and So Were We. Two other awards had direct ties to New York. The first was the Cordner Nelson lifetime-achievement writing award to the prolific Marc Bloom. Brooklyn-born and now a New Jersey resident, Marc was on hand with his wife and graciously accepted in person. The other is our newest award, established to recognize achievements in broadcasting and named for the pio- neering west coast track broadcaster – on radio and in early television – H. D. Thoreau. The inaugural recipient was the late Jim McKay, who of course spent most of his professional life in New York City working for all three major networks. We cobbled together a video presentation, thanks to YouTube, of some of McKay’s signature on-air moments, including the entire call of Jim Beatty’s historic first-ever indoor sub-4-minute mile. Most of those in attendance, though old enough to remember it, had never heard or seen the entire race, Feb. 10, 1962. McKay’s son, Sean McManus, now the president of CBS News and CBS Sports, was out of town, but Silver served as his boss’s able stand-in. Some of our pioneering Eastern members were not able to make it, including Bob Hersh, Peter Gambaccini, Jim Dunaway and Bill Miller of New York, Ed Grant and Merrell Noden of New Jersey and Larry Byrne of Rhode Island, but most in attendance felt the event was worthwhile and should become a fixture in future years. The tie-in with the Millrose event two days later helped attendance and was part of a good setup for that meet, as virtually everyone in the room was planning to be at the Armory two days later. The attendees included two of the stalwart members of the old New York Track Writers organization, Walt Mur- phy and Frank Litsky. The Track Writers used to meet for lunch every Monday of the track season, at Mamma Leone’s Restaurant, upstairs at the northeast corner of West 44th Street and 8th Avenue in Midtown Manhat- tan, a few blocks down from the Old Garden and around the corner from the old home of the NY Times, where TAFWA Newsletter - Page 2 - February 2015 Frank and I used to work. When Mamma’s closed in 1994, the Track Writers began a torturous journey to find a new home, eventually quietly wrapping up. Many of New York’s remaining track writers were in Coogan’s to celebrate something of a revival. Other Awards, Get-Togethers With four of our annual awards now in the books, nominations remain open for our remaining honors, includ- ing writing, blogging, photography and video. Deadline is early May. These will be presented on Friday morning, June 12, on the University of Oregon campus. Our annual Breakfast is no longer at the Eugene Hilton. We will also have a Brunch Social on the Sunday morning of USATF Nationals at the home of Tom and Janet Heinonen in Eugene. Dues It is time to pay your annual dues of $30 for 2015. These are payable by check to TAFWA or by Paypal, to our treasurer, Tom Casacky. FAST Annual The 2015 FAST Annual, under the guiding hand of Editor Casacky, is in the works and will again be underwrit- ten by USATF. We hope to have books in hand by early April and will keep you posted. Members whose dues are paid by then will automatically receive their copy by mail. If you want additional copies, at a cost of $20 each, let Tom know. TAFWA Mailing List It has been brought to our attention that a member of TAFWA may be using TAFWA’s electronic email mailing list to send out a mass newsletter. This is not permitted with- out TAFWA’s permission. This is not a public list and may not be used in this manner by members or non-members. The Newsletter in question includes ill-in- formed attacks against several TAFWA mem- bers by another member of our organization. This is inappropriate and should cease. Video and Photography Threats Threats are being made against the press and spectators regarding the copyright of video and photography at American track meets. We are trying to keep up with these devel- opments and will address them in this and ensuing Newsletters. We at TAFWA consider these an assault against the First Amend- ment. They include written demands as well as legal threats that no video or photography may be posted online by anyone in atten- dance at certain track meets and road and cross country races in this country. TAFWA Newsletter - Page 3 - February 2015 Inaugural NYC TAFWA Event Presented Four Awards in Broadcasting, Writing and Documentary Four awards were presented at the Track and Field Writers of America (TAFWA) inaugural Awards Dinner in New York City on Thursday evening, February 12 at Coogan’s Restaurant, two days prior to the 108th Millrose Games at the Armory. Peter Walsh, the proprieter of Coogans (right), presented the The Armory Foundation Book Award for books published in 2014 on track and field and running. The winner: WHEN RUNNING WAS YOUNG AND SO WERE WE: Col- lected Works of a Sportswriter from the Golden Age of American Run- ning. By Jack D. Welch. D&B Publishing. Jack Pfeifer, TAFWA president, presented The Cordner Nelson Award for lifetime achievement writing about track and field, in book and magazine formats. Marc Bloom was recognized for his remarkable body of work, from statistics to newsletters to bigtime journalism to authorship, including: • Editor-in-chief of the Runner in 1978, a position he held until The Runner was acquired by Runner’s World. • Publisher of the first NY State Scholastic Track in 1966, which sold for $1.