See Michael Reese Run

Photo by Joe Tighe

Hear ye.  Hear ye.  Consider this the royal easel outside of Buckingham Palace:  On Tuesday, July 23, at 4:37 a.m. Her Highness, Ashlee Roffe, was safely delivered of a girl, Delia.  The newest princess weighed seven pounds, seven ounces.  Her Great-Aunt Ellen, the Duchess of Locust Road, sends her heartiest felicitations to the new baby and her family.

(Why should the Brits have all the fun?)

Now today I’d like to remember a task I took on for the board of the Medical Research Institute Council of Chicago’s Michael Reese Hospital.  The hospital is gone now but the memory lingers on.

Back in the eighties, one of my fellow board members had headed up a little 8K race for a couple of years.  It was run on the hospital grounds.  But it hadn’t flourished.  So the MRIC board sought another alternative to the event.

Why not make the race bigger and better I said?

A vote was taken.  And by a vote of fifteen to one (the only dissenter being the sulking, now-former race director) I was chosen to head up the new Michael Reese Run.

Although I was not a runner, I had some experience with races.  For years, my brother Kenny had been director of the Highland Park Hospital run and I had helped him out at the finish line.  I knew something about race-planning requirements.

I also knew that I had to hire a professional race director ASAP.  And that would take upfront bucks.  So the first thing I did was think.

I thought about everyone I knew who supported the MRIC.  (Everyone I knew.)  Then I thought about who I knew who liked to run.  Then I thought about who was philanthropic enough to hand me a check.

Eureka!  I had it!  Neil B.  My backdoor neighbor, runner, generous patron of many Chicago institutions.  And as a bonus, his then-wife had been a Crystal Ball Chairman and my former boss at the MRIC.

I wrote a letter.  It got me a meeting.  Neil and his partner, Judd, listened carefully, and finally, Neil posed one question.

“I get asked for charity donations all the time.  They’re all worthy causes.  Why should I give you a check?”

“Because I gave your wife the exact same check when she asked me.”

“Good answer,” he conceded.

Neil was a gentleman- and he knew he had been licked.  I got the dough, his company got sponsor naming rights and we were off to the races.

I had promised to make it bigger and better.  And armed with the caché of the MRIC and Neil’s fire power, I set about asking for freebies for my would-be runners.

Harvey, my now-hired pro race director, told me that a new event wouldn’t garner many entries.  However he did tell me that the course he would lay out could comfortably hold 2000 runners.

So 2000 became my golden number.

So I asked for- and got- pizza and soft drinks for 2000 generously donated by Connie’s- a popular pizza restaurant chain from the South Side.  2000 sweat bands and running socks courtesy of Morrie Mages Sports.  2000 granola bars.  Thank you, Quaker Oats.  A trip to the Ironman Triathalon in Hawaii for the raffle.  A great band.  (Michael Lerich.)

And water for 2000.  That item was KEY.  Every runner needs water as he races through the course.

My race was planned for an early morning start time in Lincoln Park on April 21.  (My son Nick’s birthday.)  And I wrote the copy, got the sponsor’s logo artwork and had the whole thing beautifully laid out by a  professional.  Harvey had the CARA runners mailing list and he sent out the application announcing the arrival of the new Michael Reese Run to all of them.

I also asked a radio station to run some PSA’s touting the new event.

I needed a return address on the form and I didn’t think anything of it when I used my own Winnetka address.  This was a new race, after all, and Harvey had told me not to expect many return apps.

I waited.  The first day I got six.  I was thrilled!  Six new people would be in my race.  The next day I got twelve.  Nice.  The next day I got eighty.  And the next day 120.  Harvey called to check in.

“So, Ellen, how many apps came in today?” he asked laconically.

“120,” I reported.

“Hmm.  That’s strange,” he mused.  “Usually a new event gets ten or twelve.  Not 120.  Something’s up.”  And he hung up.

He was right.  It was as if I had turned on a giant pipeline, and whether because of rumor, or greed at the thought of my runner’s swag bag, or an all-expense paid trip to Hawaii, the word was out.

The Michael Reese Run was the race to be in.

My mailbox was swamped with applications and checks.  Hundreds were pouring in every day and I had to call the radio station begging them to turn off the PSA.  But it was too late.  I had filled the event in a week, and now I spent the next week returning hundreds of checks to people who didn’t make the 2000 runner cut-off.

This led to disappointment and some plea-bargaining by runners who were too slow to get in.  One guy, who found himself in front of the late Judge Aubrey Kaplan, argued that because Aubrey’s wife, Carolyn, had herself been a Crystal Ball Chairman and had clout with the MRIC,  she get him in to the now-closed race.

Judge Kaplan did not rule in his favor.

Another guy, a blind runner who ran with a guide, called the hospital attorney complaining that his entry had been turned down.  He accused the hospital of exhibiting a bias toward blind runners.

The attorney set him straight.

“The issue here isn’t that you’re blind, sir.  It’s that you’re late.”

And with the exception of the very large sixteen-wheeler that precariously backed into my driveway and delivered all the loot I had garnered for the runner goody boxes, everything went according to Hoyle.

That included a visit to the lion house at Lincoln Park Zoo.  (Did you know that if you want power for your band and p.a. system on race day, you have to see the guy who lives under the lion house? With a six pack.)

Everything was swell as we neared the big day.  And then…

The City of Chicago called.  They changed the start time.  They arbitrarily moved my 2000 person race up from early morning to one o’clock in the afternoon.  They had bumped me for a seventy-person lifeguard run.

Then they called back one day before Sunday’s event and said that we were running too near the Mayor Daley Memorial Flower Bed.  We would immediately have to change our course route.  Gallant Harvey to the rescue.

Race day dawned.  And the weather was beautiful.  It was the first gorgeous day of the year.

And with that, the ENTIRE city of Chicago decided to venture outdoors after a long, cold winter to enjoy Lincoln Park.

The park was swamped with humanity.  The off-ramps leading to the park were jammed. My race marshalls- there to assure order and hand out the water- could not get through. The pizza trucks could not get through.  The entire event, so carefully planned out to the last fancy t shirt detail, was now a shambles.

Park visitors were helping themselves to my precious water.  (My brother told me that he had seen one guy bathing his dog in it!)  And as the temperature soared into the eighties, my runners were dropping like flies.  The hospital first aid tent was filling up with dehydrated, angry runners.

And when the pizza trucks were three hours late, the crowd began calling for the race director.  And it wasn’t to take a bow.

This was Act of God stuff, but they didn’t care.  And when the ordeal was finally over, and I had taken a vacation to recover from the debacle, I arrived home only to be greeted by hate mail and death threats.

“I wish you’d die of thirst” said one of the milder ones.  I dutifully filed them all away.

And then I had to meet with my sponsors.

As I sat in the anteroom waiting to explain to Neil and Judd why “their” event had gone so south, I was shaking.  I wasn’t sure what to say but I knew the buck stopped with me.

I walked in, and before I had a chance to open my mouth with an apology, I was greeted with beams.  Beams all around.

They had loved it!  And they gave me an even biggger check for the next year’s run.

The very first app for the next year’s race appeared immmediately in my mailbox.  The name seemed familiar.  I checked my file.

Yep.  My first official entry to the next Michael Reese Run was the guy who had written me the most virulent piece of hate mail.

I signed him up right away.

It’s always fun to remember.

But a good race director better know how to forget.