For our newer members who may not know her,  Robin was one of the top masters runners in New York on the track and in road races.  She was a longtime member of the club executive committee and was our de facto social director for years.  A professor at City College, she was also instrumental in our obtaining permission to train at City,  both indoors and out.  City College was our track and middle distance home for many years, and the Nat Holman Gym at City was the site of our fiercely competitive inter-squad indoor championships throughout the 1980s.  The club sends its deepest personal regards and love to Robin.

Roland Soong by Cedric Sam

Click on the photo for the long interview by Cedric Sam posted on Commeleschinois.ca

Here is an excerpt where he comments on the CPTC website when he was the Webmaster:

“It was just a little bit weird, it just had a very strong personality because it was a little bit what you call quirky. You know, it’s like, a lot of stuff tends to be really really funny. For some reason, the stories that I want to focus are the really weird ones? So, I have one teammate, who was in the business of collecting lost gloves. You know, it’s winter, and once in a while we lose gloves, don’t know where it went. And it’s lost somewhere, and she just collects them. Then, periodically, she would make an announcement, and say, I am bringing all my gloves down to the playground to the corner of 72nd Street and Broadway. I welcome anyone – you can come down and if it’s one of your gloves, take it, even if it isn’t, take it anyways.”

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 85^th 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.”

Relishing a CPTC victory in 1973: Frank Handelman, Bennett Gershman, Dave Blackstone, and Jack Brennan.

From Frank Handelman:

“IN THE FALL OF 1972, when the Central Park Track Club started, the dominant teams in New York were Millrose and the New York Athletic Club. Millrose had virtually all New Yorkers on the team, with many from the Bronx. They had a great team, with Norb Sanders and Gary Murchke, both NYC marathon winners in the pre-five-borough days, Vince Chiapetta, the NYRR president before Fred Lebow, John Garlepp, now the Millrose coach, and many other stalwart distance runners. The NYAC was loaded with nationally ranked athletes who were sponsored by the team and came in for the local championships. They were so strong that one year, I placed 10th in the Met cross country championship in Van Cortlandt Park and all nine ahead of me were NYAC; my friend Marcel Phillipe, who ran at Fordham and then in two Olympics for France at the 800 meters, was the only one who lived in the New York area.

David got our club started with the idea that we could rise from the grassroots and challenge these local powers. In our first truly organized team effort, the Met 15 kilometer in Scarsdale in early 1973, we ran strongly and placed second. Then in October, we pointed for and ran the Met 30 kilometer, over three laps around the Central Park six mile loop. Big races in those days were about 200-300 runners, and most of us knew each other. We were up against a strong and deep Millrose contingent, but we decided to take it to them.

It was three-man scoring, and we had four who were ready, David, Jack Brennan, Bennett Gershman, and myself. Bennett and David were lawyers, and Jack and I were in law school. I ran near the front with Ben, and David was just behind, with Jack near him. During the race, Ben made me stop each lap while he ran into the trees in the West 80s to get a bottle of “Gookinaid” he had stashed there. It was a powder mix, the precursor to Gatorade, and he told me it would help us. I was dubious, and thought we were wasting precious seconds, but he was insistent that we would be strong at the end, and he was right. In those days, there were no water stops, nor splits for that matter. We then left the bottle for David and Jack.

It was like a dual meet, with Millrose and CPTC taking most of the top ten. Ben and I came in third, holding hands at the finish to create a tie, something that was commonly done then, although the officials would not formally recognize it, David was 6th, and Jack 7th, and the Met title, the first CPTC team win was ours. You can see our happiness in the post-race photo, as well as those wonderful singlets that we brought back this winter.

In the next year, future CPTC Hall of Famers Shelley Karlin and Fritz Mueller arrived, and we got stronger and much deeper, but that first team victory was our greatest thrill, and David’s dream was on the way to becoming reality.”

Dave Blackstone finishing strong

It is with great sadness that we mark the passing of Dave Blackstone, the Central Park Track Club’s founder and first president, who died Sunday evening after a long and courageous battle with cancer. A memorial service will be held this coming Sunday to which all members of the Central Park Track Club are invited. The details are as follows:

Frank Campbell Funeral Chapel
1076 Madison Avenue at 81st Street
Sunday, January 25th
2:30pm

Dave’s widow, Lynn Blackstone, has expressed her wishes that donations may be made in Dave’s honor to Memorial Sloan Kettering and the Central Park Track Club.

Last year, we had the honor as a club to induct Dave into our Hall of Fame. Frank Handelman introduced Dave and we reprint his words below.

If you would like to share your thoughts or memories about Dave, please direct them to centralparktrackclub@gmail.com.

Sincerely yours,
The Central Park Track Club

***

Frank Handelman’s Speech for Dave Blackstone’s CPTC Hall of Fame Induction

“Our first inductee is the person most responsible for the existence of this team. He is the original founder of the club. After running at the Central Park reservoir for years, he started racing, and in the fall of 1972, decided to turn the park regulars into a team. He came up with that fantastic name, Central Park Track Club.

A Columbia Law School graduate, he had been a varsity diver at NYU and served in the United States Marine Corps before going to law school. In addition to his law practice, he devoted countless hours to the club in its first decade. He was President and Coach of the team from 1972 to 1980. He personally recruited most of the team’s runners in those first years. He was also a highly competitive athlete, running the pre-Five Borough NYC marathon, over the course that covered 4 laps of the park’s tough 6-mile loop, in 2:40:07.

He started the club, literally, in his apartment on East 85th Street, along with his wife Lynn, who served as an officer for many years. She has competed for the team since its inception, and is still active as a masters runner. In fact, Lynn won the Fifth Avenue Mile this year in her age group.

It is perhaps his greatest gift to us all that at the founding meeting, the following language, which he wrote, was adopted as Article 1 of the club’s first constitution:

“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.”

As we look around this room, we see his mission of 1972 has been fulfilled.

Our first inductee for 2007 into the Central Park Track Club Hall of Fame, Dave Blackstone, the true father of our team.”

We will miss Dave deeply, and his example will push us to keep running hard for years and years and years to come.