Laps in the "old gym"

Thanks to loyal Marist Track Alum Marty McGowan for his reply to the McCann Marathon post. Marty’s historic Marist insights are always entertaining and welcome. Here is Marty’s story about another guy who liked to run laps around a gym …

This post really got to me (here he goes again, another Dark Ages story). One of the nicest teachers up at Marist was Bob Norman. I never had him for a class, but saw him every day my senior year in the old gym. Bob Norman wasn't a tall guy, but weighed well over 200 pounds by 1972.

Apparently, Mr. Norman had gotten a health scare report from a doctor or two and decided to jog in the gym to lose some weight. This was a revolutionary concept back then. But what he did and when he did it are part of the story.

Mr. Norman cleared his plan with Doc Goldman and Ron Petro, the basketball coach. He was going to run laps in the gym! He began at 3 in the afternoon. Around the ONE basketball court that was in that tiny gym. While students were playing. And he did, day after day.

This big, jovial guy going 94 feet up, 50 feet over, 94 feet back down, 50 feet over. And over and over again, lap after lap. In the spring when April came and outside running was tolerable, he stayed indoors, saying that this was where he felt comfortable. By graduation, Bob Norman had lost well over 60 pounds.

Mr. Norman made it a point to know everyone that came into the gym that year. Yeah, we were young, tough and strong. No way could we do lap after lap around that court. The Marist faculty gave you inspiration even when you weren't looking for it.

When Bob Norman took his sabbatical he went down to Manhattan to work for CBS. While he was there
he met Lowell Thomas, who was ready to retire from broadcasting and was looking for a place to keep his papers. Bob mentioned Marist on the Hudson. You know, that's the building where the outdoor swimming pool used to be … but that's another Dark Ages story.

Editor’s note: The “old gym” that Marty refers to is now Marian Hall. When I first attended Marist in 1982, the “old gym” was called, oddly enough, the “old gym” and was a storage shed for the building and grounds department. My second year at Marist, the “old gym” became Marian Hall.

Editor’s note #2: Bob Norman was a great guy. He passed away several years ago, but was always loyal to Marist in so many ways. He was the original “voice of the Red Foxes” on the radio and was an incredibly avid follower of Marist Athletics. He had a silky smooth radio voice, was an excellent professor of communication with many contacts in the industry (he was instrumental in forming and growing the internship program) and basically was just an all-around good man. One of his sons, Jim "Norm" Norman, was the original Fox mascot (now called "Shooter"); Norm lives in our town, we see him at Little League and Pop Warner games, and he is a season ticket holder at Marist basketball games too. Good stuff!

Editor’s note #3: Marty’s last sentence is of course about the Lowell Thomas building. Many of you probably do not know that there was an old swimming pool on the site of the LT building. I do not remember that, but I do remember the construction of LT, which was completed shortly after I graduated in 1986.

Thanks, Marty, for the great memories …