The following eulogy for club founder Dave Blackstone was delivered by Frank Handelman last Sunday:
We all try to make our mark in the world, and find something we can excel in. David Blackstone reached higher, and succeeded brilliantly, in two very different arenas.
I met David in 1970 running, of course, around the Central Park Reservoir. I was new to New York, a social worker, thinking about going to law school and becoming a criminal lawyer. Dave practically yelled at me, “Don’t do it, you have good work, being a lawyer is tough and grinding, and being a criminal lawyer is impossible!” Yet I did it anyway, and David went on to do it until the last days of his life.
As an attorney, Dave was a lawyers’ lawyer. He spent over 40 years doing one primary thing, and doing it as well as any one ever has. A Columbia Law School graduate, he was a criminal trial lawyer, representing people charged with murder. He was the senior member of the New York County Homicide Panel, lawyers of the top rung who chose the most difficult work available to an attorney, defending those most reviled by society. Dave was in private practice, but his work on the Homicide Panel was public service of the highest order.
After law school, I became a public defender and turned to David constantly for help and ideas about my cases.
And of course, David was a runner. And much more than a runner, he was a visionary leader. After several years of running around the Central Park reservoir, Dave got the idea of starting a racing team. There were only a few running clubs in the metropolitan area in the early 1970’s, such as the Millrose Athletic Association and the New York Athletic Club. Dave thought why not a team based in Central Park, and at the Reservoir, made up of those who were training out there on their own?
David had run his first race only the year before, a 20 kilometer at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, where he promptly burst into the lead for the first 200 meters before reality set in and the field caught him. But he finished in the middle of the pack, and he was hooked. He upped his mileage, set his sights on the marathon, and at the same time started to put together his new team.
In the fall of 1972, David convened a meeting with Lynn and a few others, and the Central Park Track Club was born. For the first 8 years, Dave was president, and Lynn was secretary –treasurer. During that period, while building the team, recruiting runners, setting up team races and out of town trips and providing for uniforms, workouts and all the rest, Dave got better and better as an athlete. He ran 55 minutes for ten miles, and then ran the toughest marathon possible. Before the New York City marathon went to the five-borough course in 1976, it was 4 times the Central Park 6 mile loop, and then some. Four laps of continuous hills and turns, and David ran it in 2:40:07.
Lynn and Dave’s home on East 85th Street was the site of many club gatherings and they were always the most generous of hosts. They have had many parties to honor their friend’s accomplishments, such as Michael Konig’s unbelievable (and to me completely illogical) string of 10,000 consecutive days running. And when Bob Jen first climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, the beginning of a climbing career that led to his reaching the top of Mt. Everest in 2004, David and Lynn hosted a celebration for him too.
Dave and I ran, literally, thousands of miles together and more laps around the reservoir than you could imagine. We never ran out of things to talk about – politics, art, sports, the law, our families, and of course, our racing plans. I was never once bored running with Dave.
And what of the club he founded, what happened to the Central Park Track Club? The team has thrived over the last 37 years, and now has over 300 active members, three paid coaches and hugely successful teams on the roads and the track. Our masters track team is one of the best, and our open teams just incredible. In 1973, Dave, Jack Brennan, Ben Gershman and I won the first road racing championship for the club. And in 2008, Dave’s creation, the Central Park Track Club won the National Club championships in Kansas, defeating running teams from all over the United States.
In the club’s first constitution, written by Dave, it states:
“The purposes of this club are to foster amateur track and field and road racing in the metropolitan area, and to serve as a competitive racing club for all, regardless of race, religion, national origin or sex.”
David, your purposes have been accomplished, and then some.
In December, 2007, David was inducted into the Central Park Track Club Hall of Fame. In accepting his award, David spoke not at all about his running or being club founder or president, but simply thanked the club and acknowledged his wonderful family.
I want to close with an article David wrote for the summer 1973 edition of the New York Road Runners Newsletter, a simple mimeographed sheet in those days. It was called “Justice at the Central Park Reservoir”, and it really captures his sense of commitment to his two life long pursuits. The article is about the founding of the Central Park Track Club. It begins:
“I started running long distance in (the) summer (of) 1968 at the Central Park Reservoir, a secluded 1.58 mile loop of dirt and gravel. I arrived prepared to race anyone in sight, even animals.”
Dave goes on to discuss a few of the early Reservoir regulars who became Central Park Track Club members, including Fred Lebow and of course Lynn.
About Ben Gershman, an original track club member, Dave wrote:
“And there was Bennett Gershman, an assistant district attorney, who runs 100 miles a week. Gershman never talks, he only prosecutes.”
The article concluded:
“In life what is crucial? What is it which makes us road people wish only to move effortlessly at 5 minute mile pace over dusty terrain? I am struck by the utter simplicity of it all. Away from all that tactical human intercourse and excess, secluded within our own bodies. Manipulation and deception get you nowhere on the road, me lads and lasses. The naked truth is that you get out what you put in at the Reservoir. In running there is justice.”