Annual Fourth of July Rotary Mile race has deep roots in Gallipolis History

By James Sands, special to the Gallipolis Times-Sentinel

Originally appeared Sunday, June 20, 2004

This year’s (2004) River Recreation Festival in early July will make the 57th running of the Rotary Mile. It hasn’t always been called the Rotary Mile. It hasn’t always had the present format and it hasn’t always been run during the July 4 festivities.

The Rotary Mile started in 1949 and was known as the Gil Dodds Mile. It would keep that name through 1984 when it was changed to its present name. From 1949-1967, the Gil Dodds Mile was usually run in late May after track season was over and was open only to Gallia Academy students. In 1968, it was opened to all Gallia County athletes.

From 1967-1984, the race was run in late April in conjunction with the Rotary Relays. It was in 1985 that the race was moved to the River Recreation Festival and the name changed. Instead of running the track at the high school, the race was run through the streets of Gallipolis.

The name Gil Dodds came from a well-known mile racer of the 1940’s. In 1944, Dodds set the world indoor record for the mile at 4:06. His best outdoor time while a student at Ashland College in 1941 was 4:13. Dodds and the Swedish racer Gunder Hagg had a series of famous races across the U.S. in the 1940’s. Films of these races would end up in the newsreels shown in theaters all over the world. Dodds is often remembered as the runner who introduced the notion of practicing with heavier shoes than the ones he would wear during the actual race.

In 1944, Dodds gave up his own running career and became a minister with Youth for Christ in the Chicago area. In 1945, he was the lead speaker in front of 50,000 youth at Soldiers Field in Chicago. During this time around Chicago, he also served as a track coach at Wheaton College. He was a Baptist pastor.

Dodds was knows as “The Flying Parson” and he would often write a Scripture reference with his autograph. His favorites were Philippians 4:13 and Matthew 5:43. In 1948, Dodds was in Gallipolis for the dedication of Memorial Field. He also spoke at a banquet held at the First Baptist Church. The first winner of the Gil Dodds Mile was Tom Crawford. Bill Hager won it in 1950 and then Dan Beabout won in 1951-53. Some years in the early days, only one runner would even finish the race.

One of the best Gil Dodds Mile races was in 1954. Dan Beabout was one of the favorites as was Byron Knutsen, who was the number one miler on the GAHS track that year. Beabout had switched to sprint races in 1954. There was also a German exchange student, Chris Nakonz, and Robert Jamison, the number two miler for GAHS in 1954. Jamison was the winner with a record time of 4:39. In fact, four racers broke the previous record time of Bill Hager.

Most of these early mile races included a big dinner for Rotarians and participants. In 1955, the Daily Tribune stated that almost 100 percent of the Rotarians turned out for that meeting. The Rotarians, sometimes numbering about 100, formed the cheering section.

Last year’s winner (2003) was Jonathan Casto with a time of 5:29. Since moving to the streets of Gallipolis during the River Recreation Festival, times have usually been much slower. The 1990 winner, Courtney Hutchinson was more than 30 seconds over the record time and that was one of the better times over the last 19 years.

When the Rotary Mile moved to the streets, the race was opened up to other ages as well. Last year, there were 38 runners who finished the race, some of whom were under 10 years of age. The slowest time was 11:51. In some years, the girls in the 11-14 category have even beaten the high school runners.

TIME magazine had an interesting story about Gil Dodds on February 3,1947:

http://time-proxy.yaga.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,886330,00.html