Jack Brennan, a founding member of the Central Park Track Club and a member of the CPTC Hall of Fame, died at age 52 twenty years ago, February 17, 2002. Jack was one of the club’s top runners in our first decades, and also a key part of the club’s development as a welcoming home for our members from all over the world. Here is the eulogy from Jack’s funeral, by Frank Handelman:
Jack Brennan – A Remembrance
In true Jack Brennan style, he first approached me in the NYU Law School cafeteria with no introduction and said, “So I hear you think you can run.” Within minutes, we had made a date to go running in Central Park, each thinking the other was all talk and probably a hopeless jogger. We did eleven miles around the Central Park Reservoir, and began a lifelong friendship.
As law school got easier, our training got more intense. By our third year, we were heading off several times a week for 20 or 22-mile runs, leaving Greenwich Village and heading up the West Side over the George Washington Bridge, into the Palisades; or over the Brooklyn Bridge, past the docks to Sunset Park and Bay Ridge and Coney Island, talking all the way. With some people, you run and don’t talk. With Jack, the conversation began with the first step and never stopped.
By our last semester we were committed marathoners. On graduation day in June 1974, we ran Yonkers, the national championship that year and our third marathon in two months. Jack was strong in the middle and waited for me, and I was strong at the end and waited for him. We finished in 2:35 holding hands, then went down to Washington Square and graduated. Even then, we had our priorities straight.
In the fall of 1972, Jack and I were among the original members of the Central Park Track Club along with Dave and Lynn Blackstone and a few others. This year, the club will celebrate its 30th anniversary. It remains a beautiful institution, made up of some 300 people of every possible description, from all over the world, running marathons and triathlons, middle distance and sprints, with three coaches and more team and individual awards than can possibly be counted. But most important to me is its spirit and the boundless camaraderie it provides. Jack was instrumental from the first months in setting that tone.
Jack got better at the marathon and finished 3rd in Yonkers. In 1978 and 1979, he came in third and then second in the national 50-kilometer championships – 31.1 miles – breaking three hours both times. Then in 1980, he ran his marathon best of 2:20:50 and competed in the United States Olympic marathon trials.
In running as in life, Jack was a force of nature. Whatever the distance, whatever the race, he just ran how he felt. When Jack wanted to go, he just went, and no logic or pre-race plan nor sense of pace could stop him. We were once in a five-mile race at Liberty State Park in Jersey and Jack was running behind the lead pack of eight or ten of us for the first mile. Suddenly he caught up and went flying by, and built up a huge lead. We caught him near the end and he finished about 10th. When I asked him why he had run with such abandon when he might have won the race with pacing, he said, ”I just felt like going fast so I did, as far as I could.”
That was Jack. He went as fast as he could, all the way through life. On the other hand, you didn’t want to set your clock to Jack’s. If he said he would pick you at 10 am, he’d show at 11. I don’t think anybody ever missed as many race starts as Jack, but he would never care. He’d just hang out and shoot the breeze and watch the race, without a worry, even if he had traveled three of four hours to get there.
While all this running was going on, Jack was building a career. One of the smartest students in our law school class, Jack joined the honors program of the New York City Law Department after graduation, then became general counsel of the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission before going into private practice. He married, moved to Westchester and had three children.
Jack went to Woodstock in 1969, and told me it changed his life. I was into jazz, but he dragged me along to rock concerts. We saw the Stones at the Garden, and the Jefferson Airplane. One night, running in the far West Village, we heard music pouring out of a loft and Jack said, “That’s the Grateful Dead!” Sure enough, it was Jerry Garcia rehearsing with the windows wide open. Jack stood there transfixed. One unforgettable New Year’s Eve, we went to see Bruce Springsteen at the Nassau Coliseum. I can still see Jack on his feet well past midnight as the E Street Band rolled into the umpteenth verse of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.”
My first run with Jack was on December 1, 1971. In those uncountable loops around the Central Park Reservoir, we got to know each other and started to tell each other our life stories. Our last run was in February 2002 in Van Cortlandt Park, just two weeks before his sudden death after a brief illness. We talked about our families and our future plans.
I’ve been running with Jack in my head for five decades and still can’t imagine not having him here. I can feel him with me, stride for stride, talking all the way. And I hear Jack now, sneaking up behind me, saying, ”Cut the crap Frank, when are you going to break 2:30 for the marathon?”
