OUR STORY

THE BEGINNINGS

By Jay Dobson

The Portland Frontrunners date back to 1982. (There were rumors of runners calling themselves Frontrunners prior to this, but no one I ever met could verify their existence, although many tried.) Anyway, upon their return from the first Gay Games (San Francisco, August 1982), some (in particular, Keaston Lowery and Kenny Davis) decided Portland needed its own Frontrunner organization. They spread word through the bars to all runners - or, more aptly, to everyone they knew who ran - that a group was forming. Back then, the Bars were the main social vehicle, so spreading word while out and about on a Friday or Saturday night was the most efficacious way to communicate. In fact the Frontrunners was one of the first gay organizations formed in Portland, although the Gay Men’s Chorus, and MCC, did pre-date it. And in those early days, we had quite a few “social runners”, those who only participated in the social events but were never seen at an actual run. In those early days, the group mainly ran on Tuesday nights (with people usually going to dinner afterwards, at a locale decided upon that night). Monthly Saturday runs took place at different locations, usually decided by the group during a Tuesday night run. As you might suspect, communication in the pre-internet days was more of a challenge. The chief means was announcements prior to any run. But there was also a monthly newsletter (which required typing, copying and mailing), and a telephone tree for emergency announcements (rarely used). There was a standing ad placed in Just Out (Portland’s gay paper at the time) which listed the location and time of our Tuesday night run. And we did have business cards which listed details about the group (including a PO Box) which members could give out to anyone they should meet who might be interested in a gay running group. It was suspected that many cards were given out with members personal phone numbers on the back to men they might want to meet again socially.

Hood to Coast

The Portland Frontrunners was an early participant in the Hood to Coast Relay, forming its first team in 1984. The first HTC took place in 1982 with just a handful of teams. Even by 1984, the number of teams was still less than 50. Back then, all teams started at the same time, midnight on Friday night, and all legs were five miles, the transition point between legs was the next five mile point wherever it happened to be. And the route varied from that of today’s course, taking logging roads to Gresham, up Powell, then along Division, across the Sellwood Bridge, over the west hills using Corbet, then out Vermont to Beaverton, following Farmington Road out to Yamhill County, then over the Coast Range to Pacific City. Communication between team vehicles was non-existent as cell phones did not exist. Guestimates as to when a team vehicle would arrive at the hand-off point were attempted and the next car would then arrive early (or so they hoped) to the transition in order not to miss the runner hand-off. This was often not the most accurate of methods, as it was not unusual to see the last runner of one team come into a transition area only to find that the next team member (in the second vehicle) was not there to take the handoff. This did not go over well with the runner who had just killed himself to get there as fast as he could.

Needless to say, that first Frontrunner team in 1984 found the event to be quite the adventure. The team name, PF Flyers, was designed to be both a reference to the Frontrunners, and to a popular tennis shoe of the 1950s, back in the 50’s every cool kid had to have PF Flyers - Converse came much later and running shoes did not exist then, just tennis shoes. Although the team had the full complement of 11 runners (another difference on the old course) when it submitted its registration, 2 people pulled out the week before the run, so the team completed the relay with just 9 runners, most of whom had to run 4 five mile legs rather than the anticipated three legs. Mini-vans were not as popular (ie available) back then, so the team rented one from Rent-a-Wreck. True to its name, this van broke down during this vehicles first leg, and had to be returned in an emergency detour while the runner was out on the course. Rent-a-Wreck cheerfully replaced it with a humongous Ford station wagon, which had very much the appearance of a reject from The Brady Bunch. Amazingly, team Brady bunch, as we now called ourselves, made it back to the course in time to meet its runner come into the transition for the hand-off. The team got to the coast sometime after 11 PM, crashed at a campground which had been reserved, relieved to have survived the journey.

1987 marked either the second or third time PFR’s sponsored a team in HTC. (Memories are fading at this point, sadly.) But the 1987 HTC did produce one memorable event which I will never forget. It occurred during a transition zone crossing the Coast Range, where the view was looking east, across the Willamette Valley with Mt. Hood in the background, a perfect vista of the ground the team had travelled up to that point. Anyway, Roger Yerke and I were walking down to the hand-off point to await our runner when we found ourselves just behind a member of the Killer Bees, the dominant team at the time, made up of elite high school and college runners. The Killer Bees had won the relay several times by that point, were well known, and easily identified by their team uniform. At that point some “obnoxious straight guy” came up to the kid and pretended not to recognize that he was a Killer Bee. He asked the kid what team he was on, and the kid relied that he was a Killer Bee. To this, his interrogator, thinking he was being incredibly witty, no doubt, said, “Oh, I thought you were with the Gay Men’s Chorus”, because obviously no gay person could do anything as strenuous and athletic as Hood to Coast. (One has to remember that the 1980’s was still not a good period to be gay, that there was a lot of prejudice out there, and that the Gay Men’s Chorus was one of the most visible gay organizations in the community.) Immediately after hearing this “witticism” about the Men’s Chorus, Roger, without missing a beat, and with an extraordinarily straight face, piped up, “Oh, no, that’s our team.” The guy turned beat red, slinked off (hopefully, to crawl back under whatever rock he had come from), while I just split a gut I was laughing so hard. Anyway, the team made it to the beach again this year, and a good time was had by all.

MISCELLANEOUS ACTIVITIES

Among other activities during these early years, there were exchanges with the Seattle Frontrunners, and with the Vancouver, BC Frontrunners. The Vancouver group would visit one weekend in the summer, while we would go to Vancouver during President Day weekend. The photos included some from one such trip to Vancouver, although I do not recall the year. I do recall that it snowed that weekend, as the photo can attest.

And although the Portland Frontrunners, as a club, was not an official entrant in the Gay Games, many of the members were participants on Team Portland at the 1982 Games (San Francisco), 1986 Games (San Francisco), 1990 Games (Vancouver, BC) and 1994 Games (New York City).  At the 1986 Games, the San Francisco Frontrunners organized a get together for all Frontrunner clubs across the country, the outcome of which was the formation of the International Frontrunners, and the PFR were an original member of this organization. The 1994 Games was held at the same time as the 25th Anniversary of the Stonewall riots. The Pride march in New York (held as the Games came to a close) was estimated to have a crowd of around a million marchers, who all spilled into Central Park. (As an anecdote, after the march, as I strolled through Central Park, watching all the marchers as they spread across the Park, I heard one New Yorker say to her companion, “Is there something going on today, the Park seems different today for some reason.” I thought, only in New York could a million gays show up and the natives would just sort of notice that something seemed different.)

The Portland Frontrunners also sponsored Pride Runs in the 1980’s & 90’s, but I have no photos from those events. Those runs generally took place the weekend before The Cascade Run-Off and ran from the Dunniway track up Terwilliger. The Frontrunners continued to be active until around 1996/1997 when active participation dropped off.

HIATUS AND REBIRTH

By Don Robinson, President 2001 to 2003

Frontrunners clubs have long been a vital part of my physical, social, and mental well-being after Coming Out. I was very active with Frontrunners Boston for 10 years before returning to my native Oregon in 1999. Upon my return, I was shocked to discover the Portland Frontrunners (PFR) were no longer in existence. I contacted a long-time friend, Jerry Grossnickle, who had been an active PFR member. Jerry confirmed that as the last Treasurer of the PFR Board, he had filed articles of dissolution with the State of Oregon a few years earlier, due to lack of member interest.

I could not believe it. Surely, there had to be many LGBTQ+ runners/walkers in the Portland area who wanted to: run, walk, train, race, and socialize with one another. Something needed to be done to resurrect PFR. The largest LGBTQ+ sports club in Portland at the time was the Adventure Group (TAG). They were incredibly organized with nearly 200 members and had an up-to-date website that listed their frequent events like: hiking, camping, biking, cross-country skiing, snow-shoeing, and their very well-attended monthly potlucks. I was hesitant to kick-start another PFR without knowing exactly how much interest there was, so I wondered if piggy-backing off TAG’s successful model would be a quick way to measure any interest. Former TAG President, Casey MacDonald (who was behind much of the recent growth of TAG) thought I had a great idea. In October 1999, TAG agreed to experiment with a Saturday 10:00 am 5-mile Fun Run along the downtown Waterfront that would meet at the River Queen/Albers Mills parking lot west of the Broadway bridge. After a few weeks and after being additionally advertised in local rags: Just Out and Willamette Week, we were seeing only about 7 regular runners. I reached out to former Frontrunners to join us, and then we invited walkers. In early 2000, our numbers started to grow, and former Frontrunners started to join TAG and our weekly runs. In April 2000, we added a Tuesday 6:30 pm Run/Walk that met at the Duniway Park Track and ran along Terwilliger Blvd—where we run today using the same route as the original PFR’ers.

By September of 2001, it was not unusual to have 20 runners and 15 walkers at both events. The runners though were disappointed that more runners were not showing up, but no one seemed willing to take the good deal of energy necessary to re-build a new PFR from the ground up, so I agreed to meet with the TAG Board and then President Michael Connelly with an unusual proposal. We would re-establish a new Portland Frontrunners chapter as a subsidiary of TAG and would continue to use the communication backbone of TAG—again with the intent to spin-off eventually. After much lively debate, the TAG Board approved my proposal.

Not all of the runners were pleased with this change. Some of the younger runners preferred a spin-off sooner rather than later but not necessarily into a Frontrunners organization but into more of an endurance sports group focusing on activities like biathlons, triathlons, trail-running adventure races, marathons, and ultra-marathons. Our walkers were not too keen on this idea, and so I encouraged all to keep an open mind, but I insisted our new PFR should follow a Frontrunners model and should include runners and walkers.

A few weeks later, I get an email from Damon Schmidt with a link to a brand-new Portland Frontrunners website—completely independent from TAG! An IBM employee, Damon, had cranked out a decent-looking website over the weekend with content help from Brain Craig and June Kansopan (all recent running regulars). I was shocked, though, thinking this was some sort of coup d'état. They said, no, not a coup, but the time was now for that spin-off into a new Portland Frontrunners, and they would help make it happen. “Will walkers be included?” I persisted. Yes, they agreed and wanted me to be the first club President. In October 2001, PFR was re-born!

The TAG Board and our walkers were a tad miffed by not consulting them first, as it had been only a few weeks since the earlier arrangement, but all eventually agreed it was for the best for both organizations. Indeed, for the next 10 years, the Tuesday and Saturday Run/Walks sponsored by PFR remained joint events for both clubs resulting in cooperation and new memberships across both organizations.

The four of us hit the ground running (as it were) to re-build PFR. We created and modeled our By-Laws based on the New York Frontrunners’ By-Laws. We held our first election in late 2001, and we four comprised the first Board of Directors. I served as President in 2002 and 2003.

In early 2002, we moved the Saturday Run/Walk to our current Saturday meeting location after completion of the Eastbank Esplanade. We resumed marching in the annual Pride Parade and hosting a booth at the Pride Festival. Pride was always great outreach, as we would see a surge of new members after every Pride weekend. We also renewed our membership to International Frontrunners (IFR) and remain a member to this day. I was the Team Captain of our resumed sponsorship of a Hood-to-Coast Team in August 2002.

In 2003, we joined the Roadrunners Club of America (RRCA). (Founded in 1958, RRCA is the oldest and largest distance running organization in the United States with over 1500 running club and event members representing 200,000 individual runners active in their running communities). By joining RRCA, this gave us 501(c)(3) status under their umbrella policy along with very affordable liability insurance. Today, we are still a member of RRCA. In just our second year (as the re-born club), we had 55 paid members.

We sponsored another Hood-to-Coast Team in 2003 with Brian Craig and Bill Cunninghame as Co-Captains. Our Team was called “Queer Eye for the Straight Runner!”  Numerous women thought our theme was a hoot and wanted their picture taken with our decorated vans, but their somewhat stunned straight male teammates would blush and quickly move out of camera range.

In 2004, Frontrunners Scott Lechert, Kent Johnson, Steven Olsen, and I entered and won the costume contest just prior to the annual “Starlight Run” in June. Based on the two irreverent female leads in the British comedy, “Absolutely Fabulous,” we wore full body towel wraps, towel turbans, green mint facials and campy sunglasses while carrying oversized martini glasses and cigarettes! Sweetie Darlings, we were the “Moist Towelettes!”

In 2010, Frontrunners Scott Lechert, Mike Fromherz, Jon Wan and I entered and won (again!) the “Starlight Run” costume contest as former East German Olympic Schvimmers who had taken up a new vocation: Synchronized Schvimming. Wearing onesies with matching bathing caps and goggles, we performed two routines onstage and repeatedly while running to delighted audiences. We were known as “Different Strokes!”

Twenty-one years after our rebirth, I am proud of what we accomplished back then to keep our PFR stride alive, and I am enormously grateful for all who helped us get to where PFR is today.