The Running Of The Green

Winter means something different to everyone. Now that I have given up running round in circles, winter holds a very special significance for me. I retired from athletics some years ago, 1962 to be exact, and retired to Ireland in a different sense even before then, in 1960. I came home that year to my first love, Dublin, to settle down. I lived at home for a while, then did my bit to ruin the late marrying trend in the country by getting wed at the early age of 27 years. I have my own home, a loving and patient wife and three potential Olympians of my own.

But back to winter. When I was living in America, winter meant the indoor season, a round of races spread from New York to Boston, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Cleveland and Chicago, from January through March. Winter's Fridays or Saturdays from 1955 to 1959 were no ordinary days. I donned the Villanova singlet and stepped out on a board track to race for college and country against the cream of the world's athletes. Tension, excitement, thrills were there in plenty—and they are still with me, every bit as alive today. Almost with my first breath of cold January air my mind flashes back through the years and I can smell the wooden chips off the board tracks of many an arena. Without closing my eyes I'm back in Madison Square Garden and I can hear the crowd. Mixed emotions. Some cigar-chewing, beer-drinking fanatic perched up near the rafters screams down at me, " Delany, you bum, when are you goin' to run?" or the tumultuous cheers of that same crowd after I had for once "run" and perhaps set a new world indoor mark for the mile.

But it all began long before—September 23, 1954, and I was at Shannon Airport ready to board a Pan American flight to the States to avail myself of an athletic scholarship at Villanova University. I was emotionally drained and upset at leaving my mother and father. I kissed them goodby and for all I knew would never see them again. And I was leaving, too, my beloved Ireland.

Things had happened so fast. A few letters to Villanova. A cable telling me I was accepted as a scholarship student from Coach Jumbo Elliott. The mad hustle to secure my airline ticket and visa, a new suit of clothes—and where was Villanova? I didn't even know. Would anyone meet me?

In New York I was one of the last off the aircraft, and as I stepped out into the sweltering September heat I was almost overcome by the belt of warm, humid air. My tweed suit and woolen underwear, coupled with the load of hand pieces I had to haul, made me soon wonder if I had stepped into another country or a Turkish bath. I still did not know where Villanova was. I asked a few people but no one seemed to know.

Just then I saw a handsome young man on the other side of a rampart, wearing a large blue sweater with a big white V on it. For the first time, and without realizing it, I uttered the college cheer, "V for Villanova," and gathering my bits and pieces made straight over to him with the most relieved smile of my life lighting my face. He was Jim Moran, captain of the Villanova track team, and he had come up to New York to collect me. And I might add, thanks be to God, for if I were left on my own I would probably never have found the place and might have ended up in Manhattan College.

We still had to journey into New York City, take a train to Philadelphia and from there the P & W out the Main Line to Villanova. Jim must have realized how tired I was, for all the while he avoided my questions about how far it was to the college. "Another few minutes," he kept reassuring me. I fell asleep for the whole journey from New York to Philadelphia, but by then my excitement at the prospect of seeing the Villanova campus carried me on the last stage to my new home.

And I was not disappointed. My first impression of the university was one of amazement at the size of the place—so many different buildings, all of which I was soon to know—and at the beauty of the campus. Rolling green hills, over which I was to jog many a mile, stretched as far as my eye could see. I was delighted. I felt I was going to be happy in America.

Perhaps the most welcome sight after all my journeying was a wire-spring bed in Jim Moran's room. I lay myself down to sleep, and sleep I did. I have it on good report I slept well over 24 hours straight. In fact, while asleep, without knowing it, I was achieving some notoriety. The track team and Coach Elliott began to wonder what sort of athlete they had got themselves. "Hell, is this Irishman going to sleep all day, every day?"

Much to their surprise, I eventually got up, and then began the process of meeting a myriad of new faces, some of whom would be my closest friends for the next five years. Al Ligorelli, Johnny Kopil, George Browne, Charlie Jenkins, Bill Rock, Alex Breckenridge, to name but a few, met me and welcomed me to Villanova. Everyone was so friendly I could hardly believe it. And everything about America was so new to me I had not a moment to be homesick. The cars, such colors, size and style; no longer pictures in a magazine but roaring by me down Lancaster Avenue. The first time I walked across the campus, everywhere I looked I saw squirrels scampering beneath the trees or brazenly seeking tidbits from the passersby. I had never seen a squirrel before.