She Was Attacked For Running The Boston Marathon!

00:00:10
Speaker 1: This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories. And we tell stories about everything here on this show, including yours. Send them to OurAmericanStories.com. There’s some of our favorites. Katherine Switzer was the first woman to run the Boston Marathon. This is her story of why she ran it and what happened when she did.

00:00:35
Speaker 2: I was the first woman to actually register for the race and pin on a bib and go to the start line and run the Boston Marathon.

00:00:42
Speaker 3: There was a woman.

00:00:43
Speaker 2: The year before, named Bobby Gibb, who jumped in the race unregistered. And I don’t want to take anything away from her, but what is really amazing about my story? Sometimes the worst things in your life can become the best things in your life.

00:00:57
Speaker 3: And that is that when I, I…

00:01:01
Speaker 2: Showed up at the starting line of the Boston Marathon, I was with my coach, my teammates, and it was a snowy, sleety, horrible day. And yet, all the guys in the race were so wonderful and welcoming to me, and they were excited that a woman was registered and signed up for the race. And they would say, “Hey, I wish my wife would run.

00:01:20
Speaker 3: I wish my girlfriend would run. Go for it! We’re with you all the…”

00:01:23
Speaker 2: Way!” And they were extremely, extremely motivating, and it was a wonderful, wonderful time until the gun went off. And then down the street we went. I was very, very happy to finally be running the Boston Marathon. And the official truck came by and the press truck came by at the same time. First was the press truck, and they were honking at us to move over because they were coming through and taking pictures, shooting from the back of the truck as we were running toward them. And the officials and the photographers just went crazy, seeing there was a girl in the race wearing bib numbers. And they began teasing one of the officials on the official bus, and his name was Jock Simple. He was the co-race director of the race. And they began teasing him and saying, “Hey, Jocko, there’s a girl in your race, and she’s wearing numbers. I wonder what her mother calls her, you know, ‘Kurt,’ ‘Carry,’ or ‘Kim?'” And they were referring to the race program because I had signed up for the Boston Marathon with my initials, K.V. Switzer. But the reason that it incited the official was because they were teasing him about it, and he jumped off the press bus and went down the street after me and jumped on me and grabbed me and said, “Get the hell out of my race and give me those numbers!” and tried to rip my bib numbers off. And my coach was trying to get him away from me, and he was saying, “Leave her alone! Leave her alone! She’s okay, I’ve trained her.” And he swatted my coach away and said, “Stay out of this!” And they came back after me, but my boyfriend was also running with me. And my boyfriend just happened to be a 235-pound ex-All-American football player who was only running the Boston Marathon because a girl…

00:03:05
Speaker 3: Could do it, he could do it.

00:03:07
Speaker 2: But he came in very handy at that moment because he smacked the official and knocked the official out of the race instead. And my coach screamed, “Run like Helen!” And down the street we went, and we were really, really scared. I was absolutely terrified because I didn’t know why this official had attacked me. I couldn’t understand why he was so angry. And I began thinking, “Well, it’s probably because he’s the race director. He thinks I’m making a fool of him and trying to sneak into the race,” when all along, you know, I officially registered because that’s what the rules said you had to do. But anyway, the whole incident was captured in front of the press truck, and the pictures of this incident were flashed around the world. Even before I finished the race, people around the world were seeing these images of this girl running, a girl being attacked by a race director, and then being saved by a burly boyfriend. Because in 1967, that’s what people loved to think, is that, you know, if a girl did something and was a damsel in distress, she was going to get saved by the night on the White Charter.

00:04:13
Speaker 3: And that’s essentially what happened.

00:04:16
Speaker 2: But the whole story was bigger than that, and the whole story was a much bigger one about why women weren’t included in the Boston Marathon, why this official was so angry with me for running. What was the problem here? It wasn’t the road of free and open space for everybody? So, certainly, it was a moment that changed my life. I often say, “I started the Boston Marathon as a girl, and I finished the Boston Marathon as a grown woman,” because the reality is, you can’t run 26.2 miles. That’s the distance of a marathon: 26 miles, 385 yards.

00:04:53
Speaker 3: You can’t run that distance and stay angry. And through the…

00:04:57
Speaker 2: Next few miles, I tried to figure out why this official was so angry with me, and I was really furious with him, and I was afraid of him. But long about Heartbreak Hill, about 21 miles into the race, the anger really left me, and I left me with wondering why. And I said, “Well, that’s because he’s a product of his time. He’s a man who doesn’t believe women can do arduous things and shouldn’t be allowed to do them for that reason, because maybe he believes that, you know, it would make us unfeminine, or there was something socially wrong with this; it was just not appropriate for women to be in what was traditionally a man’s race.” Although, as I said, there were no rules written about this, and I sort of forgave him because he was just a product of his time. But then I got angry at women, and I kind of wondered where they were. You know, the longest distance then in the Olympic Games for women was only 800 meters, twice around the track.

00:05:56
Speaker 3: And it was…

00:05:57
Speaker 2: Always assumed that if a woman man more than that, that something horrible would happen to her, you know, like she would turn into a man, or Harold grow in her chest, or she’d turn into some behemoth, and her uterus would fall out; she’d never have children. I mean, the myths were just unbelievable, and I think all the women believed those myths. I didn’t because I came from a family of great pioneers and homesteaders and people who had done very, very tough things.

00:06:24
Speaker 3: A marathon was no big deal for the likes of…

00:06:27
Speaker 2: My family. And so I was surrounded by the images of women who could do anything in my family. And I realized that the women weren’t there in the Boston Marathon because they were afraid. They were afraid of those myths that they had heard, and they believed those myths, and they didn’t have any opportunities to prove otherwise, or reinforcement to prove otherwise, or, you know, belief and encouragement to prove otherwise. And then I realized, if I could create opportunities for women so that they could feel as good as I felt—felt very empowered and strong—if I could do that for them, then we could really, really change a lot of things.

00:07:11
Speaker 1: And you’re listening to Catherine Switzer. “I started the Boston Marathon as a girl, and I finished it as a woman,” she said. Her story continues here on Our American Stories. Folks, if you love the stories we tell about this great country, and especially the stories of America’s rich past, know that all of our stories about American history, from war to innovation, culture, and faith, are brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College, a place where students study all the things that are beautiful in life and all the things that are good in life. And if you can’t get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their free and terrific online courses. Go to Hillsdale.edu to learn more. And we continue with Our American Stories. We last left off with Catherine Switzer as the first woman to run the Boston Marathon. We return to Catherine’s story and how she came to run the race in the first place.

00:08:26
Speaker 2: Running had given me just about everything in my life that I had felt great. I felt empowered, and it had reflected in many other areas of my life, not just running. So by the time I crossed the finish line, I already had kind of a life plan, which was to create opportunities for women in running and also for me to become a better athlete. I finished that first Boston Marathon in four hours and 20 minutes, and I knew people were going to tease me and not take me seriously because in those days, in the late ’60s, the only people who ran…

00:08:59
Speaker 3: Who ran well or pretty well anyway.

00:09:03
Speaker 2: Very few people just jogged, and people would say, “Oh, that’s just a jogging time.”

00:09:08
Speaker 3: And that’s exactly what happened the next day.

00:09:11
Speaker 2: The official himself who threw me—tried to throw me out of the race—said, “I could…

00:09:16
Speaker 3: Walk it that fast!”

00:09:17
Speaker 2: I mean, that was really a horrible thing to say on top of everything else. And the fact is, is that you can’t walk it that fast, not even close. And so I said, “Okay, watch me. I’m going to try to become a good athlete.” But let’s go back and think about what got me there in the first place, because I think knowing a person’s history and why they were motivated to do something, and how, and who changed their lives, is…

00:09:46
Speaker 3: Maybe even the bigger part of the story.

00:09:48
Speaker 2: And in my case, I began running when I was 12 years old because I wanted to make the field hockey team in my high school. And I was a little skinny girl, pre-pubescent, very nervous about going to a big high school with grown-ups essentially there. And my father said, “Listen, if you want to make that field hockey team, you should run a mile a day. And if you’d run a mile a day, you’d be one of the best players on the team.” He was really a very motivating guy, very convincing. And so I said, “Oh, God, I could never run a mile a day!” And he said, “Sure you could!

00:10:21
Speaker 3: You could do it right now, I know you could!”

00:10:23
Speaker 2: And he helped me measure off our yard. It was seven laps, and all through Washington, D.C.’s stinking hot summer, I ran this mile a day in preparation for the autumn when I would go to high school to try out for the field hockey team. And my dad was right. When I tried out for the team, it was really one of the best players. Not because I had any skills—I mean, I never even had a stick in my hand—but because I never got tired, and I was in great condition, and I could just about outrun everybody. So when I made that team, I felt really, really proud of myself. So I kept running every day because I felt maybe it was magic. I didn’t realize it was just conditioning. I thought, in my kind of little childish brain, that this is pure magic. Well, my little brain was actually 100% right, because I’ve been running for 50…

00:11:14
Speaker 3: Eight years, and it is magic.

00:11:17
Speaker 2: You know, the whole thing about running is not really just about conditioning or getting fast or becoming a good athlete.

00:11:26
Speaker 3: It’s really about the sense of…

00:11:28
Speaker 2: Empowerment and strength and confidence and accomplishment that it gives you. And so here I was now going into my teenage years and going into high school, feeling like I had a victory under my belt every day that nobody could take away from me. And if you feel really confident about yourself, it helps you make a decision that’s a right decision and not a wrong decision in many cases.

00:11:53
Speaker 3: And it was…

00:11:54
Speaker 2: Phenomenal. That also it perpetuated the concept for me that if I could do that—that like a mile a day—I bet I could run two miles a day. If I could make the field hockey team, I bet I could write for the school newspaper.

00:12:12
Speaker 3: I’ve always used running as…

00:12:15
Speaker 2: An empowerment tool for myself, to give me confidence to take on some of the most insane challenges you can imagine and things I would never imagine doing.

00:12:27
Speaker 3: Or things that have happened to me.

00:12:30
Speaker 2: I’ve been able to both endure, prevail over, or continue on with even something better because I’ve had the confidence that the running has given me. It’s amazing. In a bigger sense, that’s what’s the most important part of this story, is the transformational experience of running for women and how it changes their lives and helps them control their lives in ways they never believed they could, and to take on responsibilities and make decisions that they were denied for many, many years because they say, you know, “If I can run a mile, then I can run five miles.” And then they run 10 miles. And then when they run a marathon—26.2 miles—they realize they can do anything. When I went to university…

00:13:23
Speaker 3: After high school, I was running three miles a…

00:13:25
Speaker 2: Day, and I wanted to naturally run at university as well. But Syracuse University at the time had absolutely no intercollegiate sports…

00:13:34
Speaker 3: For women, if you can imagine that. And I didn’t know what to do.

00:13:40
Speaker 2: So I decided that I would ask the men’s track coach and cross entry coach if I could…

00:13:46
Speaker 3: Come and run on the men’s team.

00:13:49
Speaker 2: Now, I never would have had the courage to do that if I hadn’t had that base all through high school of running, but I did. And he was very nice, but you could see he was trying, I’m hard not to laugh at me. He said I couldn’t run officially on the team, it was against NCAA rules, but he would welcome me if I wanted to come and work out with the team, and I did. And he was very, very surprised that I showed up. And I thought when I went out to run with the men that they would think I was trying to be in their face, that I was trying to show that I was tough and I deserved to be on the team, and I wasn’t that way at all, and they didn’t perceive that. They really encouraged and motivated me, and were very happy to see me and very, very welcoming. One guy in particular was the volunteer coach for the team, who was an ex-marathoner. He was 50 when I met him, and I always joked that he was really ancient, you know, 50 years old.

00:14:47
Speaker 3: I was 19.

00:14:50
Speaker 2: And he felt really sorry for me because all these boys that were running were scholarship boys, and they were fast. I couldn’t keep up with them at all. I was running three miles a day. We were running like six or eight miles a day. And this guy, his name was Arnie Briggs, had been an ex-marathoner, and he…

00:15:07
Speaker 3: Was now injured: bad knees, bad Achilles.

00:15:10
Speaker 2: So he decided to start just jogging with me. And as we jogged along, he would tell me stories of his ancient running days, including 15 Boston Marathons. And every night out running together after classes, he would tell me another story about the Boston Marathon.

00:15:28
Speaker 3: And, you know, here I was.

00:15:30
Speaker 2: You know, I had heard of the Boston Marathon, and kind of in the back of my mind, I always thought that that would be kind of a dream goal to one day have, but here I was every day learning about Clarence Damar and Tarzan Brown and Johnny the Kelly the Elder and Johnny Kelly the Younger. All these heroes of the sport became sort of my Olympian gods, if you see what I mean. And pretty soon, as it always does in Syracuse, by even by late October, it began snowing, and the snow was coming down, and all the men in the cross entry team finished their season, and they went inside to run in the fieldhouse on the indoor track, and it was so stuffy and smelly and hot in there. I said to Arnie, my coach—now he’s my coach, my running partner—”Let’s stay outside and run.” And he said, “Have you ever run through a Syracuse winter?” You’d never been here before, and I said, “Well, it can’t be that tough.”

00:16:22
Speaker 3: Well, you have no idea.

00:16:23
Speaker 2: I mean, it was like 190 inches of snow that year, and there were…

00:16:28
Speaker 3: Days and nights that it was 30 and 40 decrease below zero. It was absolutely incredible.

00:16:35
Speaker 2: But I kept hearing the stories of the old Boston Marathons, and Arnie and I would plow through the snow and plow through the darkness together. And he would tell me all these stories again and again, and finally, one night in January, I said, “I’m so sick of hearing about the Boston Marathon.

00:16:52
Speaker 3: Let’s just run it!”

00:16:53
Speaker 2: And then this was the first big turning point. Arnie, my beloved coach and friend, said, “A woman can’t run the Boston Marathon.

00:17:04
Speaker 3: Women are two week and too fragile.” And I burst out laughing.

00:17:08
Speaker 2: I said, “We are out here running 10 miles in a blizzard in the dark, and you’re telling me I can’t run a marathon?” And he said, “Ten miles is not 26.” And I reminded him that I had read in the newspaper that Bobby Gibb had run the Boston Marathon the year before, and he just burst out in anger, and he said, “No dame ever ran no marathon!” He just couldn’t believe—get his mind around—the fact that a woman could do this…

00:17:39
Speaker 3: Ultimate distance.

00:17:41
Speaker 1: And when we come back, we’ll hear Catherine prove her coach wrong and run that marathon here on Our American Stories. She had been told by so many that…