Boston Marathon

By noon last Monday -- Marathon Day -- the crowds had begun to form along Boston's Exeter Street, to perch on window ledges. After lunch the windows filled up and eyes turned down the street to catch the first glimpse of what would presently appear -- a runner, his face set, his eyes unseeing, pacing down the hot pavement toward the tape in front of the Athletic Association. Would it be Clarence De Mar, 42-year-old school teacher, who has won seven times in 20 years? Would it be Karl Koski, the iron-legged Finn, or barrel-chested Whitey Michaelson who won the Manhattan A. A. U. marathon last fortnight? The crowd discussed its favorites and perspired, for the temperature was 77DEG. The blazing spring sun would do the runners no good.

The entry list was amazingly big -- 228 -- but the heat helped cut it to 189 actual starters on the 26-mi. run. They jogged along the road from Hopkinton to Wellesley -- the halfway mark -- and at Wellesley Square the college girls came out to wave to them and runners who still felt spry waved back. But the last half of the course was the real test.

At last the people on Exeter Street saw the runner they had been waiting for; there were cheers, a waving of hats, a craning of necks, and yet looks of astonishment. For who was this? Few recognized him until his name was passed along the line--Henigan, it was Jimmy Henigan, from Medford. No other runner was anywhere near him as he swung easily down the street to the tape. His time, as was to be expected in the heat, was far behind the record. Fred Ward of Manhattan finished second, Karl Koski third, David Sagerlund fourth, Clarence De Mar fifth.

To Winner Henigan went special honors. On his brow Captain George Demeter of Boston, Grand Governor of the Greek-American Progressive Association, placed a laurel wreath made of laurel from the plain of Marathon, Greece. To him was awarded in addition to the usual diamond studded medal, another medal, inscribed with the word "Nenkykamen," the famed dying cry of Pheidippides, who bore the news of the Battle of Marathon to Athens. Like many marathoners, Henigan, 39, has outraced his own youth. He has been a long distance runner for 20 years. He is frail, short, has brown hair and a pert expression which long ago gave journalists a peg to hang him on: "Smiling Jimmy." He was on the Olympic cross-country team of 1924 and the Olympic 10,000 metre team of 1928.

*Before the formation of the National Hockey League (1908), so large were the gate receipts of one Montreal team that Canadian hockey fans nicknamed it the "Millionaires." The name stuck, was used by subsequent successful teams, finally devolved upon the Canadiens' rooters.

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