Natick High School

Class of 1959

2011 Boston Marathon

It’s a good thing that no one is paying me to take pictures and post them on this web site.

I screwed up AGAIN. I had Ken running toward me in Lincoln Square, took his picture(or thought I did), got him running towards Boston. Then I went back to my son’s place to look at the pictures. The first picture didn’t get taken. Time for either a new camera or a new camera man.

However, the local Milford paper had Ken front and center in today’s edition. Thanks to Joanna Drowne for letting me know. Here he is running through Framingham.

And here is Ken’s story about the t-shirt in downtown Natick.

April 18, 2011 – Marathon Day

Well all things considered it went pretty good. The weather was just right with the wind at your back. I planted the t-shirts at Middlesex Path park across from Fiske Pond and picked them up (18 shirts in a bag) and started to run up the hill on West Central Street. The bag was a lot heavier than I anticipated after running 10 miles and lost a little time. I started tossing them out to the Redmen folks as they started to cheer when they saw the Redmen shirt coming down the hill toward the center of town. They went nuts. I was amazed at the reception. There are so many diehard Redmen and Redgals out there. One guy yelled: “To hell with the Red & Blue, Go Redmen Forever.”

I stopped right in the center of town, across from the park and started to unload the bag, tossing them to the crowd – almost caused a pile up from runners from behind. There were pockets of Redmen cheering all the way from Ashland to Boston College. So much for the Red & Blue. You may be interested to know that while visiting the Morse Library several months ago, Gaylene Bordeaux informed me that NHS will no longer use the name Sassamon for the year book.

Well, all in all it was good. Although I was 13 minutes slower this year than last, in our age group, we managed to come in second in Massachusetts. I missed first place by 40 seconds to my chief competitor, Englishman Harry Carter from Blackstone. He has cleaned my clock the last 3 years in a row, but I’m gaining on him. Wait ‘till next year.

Ken Poole

So here he is, heading East towards Boston. He had just run about 10 ½ miles and looked cool and collected.

Our Ken Poole will be running the Marathon again this year.

As he makes his way through downtown Natick, he will be throwing several of these special Dick Anderson tribute T-Shirts into the crowd. I’m not sure what time he will be coming through the center, but cut him some slack, he’s old.

Many thanks to Ken for paying tribute to Dick in this fashion.