Excerpt From My New Book, Never Stop Pre
Readers:
Below is an excerpt from my new book, Never Stop Pre: The Enduring Inspiration of America's Greatest Sports Legend. Please consider making a purchase to support an independent publisher. It might make a great holiday gift for any runner or Oregon history buff and includes several stories of homelessness. It's available now through nestuccaspitpress.com or Amazon.
One last leg of the official research remained for the writer—visiting Pre's grave site. The unofficial research would continue forever because the writer would never stop running into Pre. It started when he was eight years old and would surely continue in new and totally unforeseen and wonderful ways.
It was a sunny weekday morning in April.
The writer pulled into the parking lot of the Sunset Memorial Park on the south end of Coos Bay. He exited the car and surveyed the cemetery: hills, shore pines and stunted cherry trees in bloom, gravel roads, wildflowers, dandelions abounded, bumblebees danced, molehills rose up here and there, tilted headstones.
In other words, looking disheveled, just like Steve Prefontaine in the 70s.
A deer grazed in the distance. Steam rose from the slough below. It occurred to the writer that Pre probably ran through this cemetery in high school.
The writer walked up to the office and tried the front door. Locked. He read a sign: CLOSED. There was no signage about the whereabouts of Pre's grave site. That seemed odd. The location was assuredly to be found on the Internet. The writer merely had to take out his phone and...
He glanced behind him, down a hill. He saw two men digging a grave with an excavator and a shovel. He walked over to them to ask about Pre. They would know.
They saw the writer walking toward them and waved. He waved back. They met and the men stopped working and gave him the lowdown. They pointed to a big cherry tree, up another hill.
If the writer had used his phone he would have never met gravediggers at work or see how they lit up telling a stranger where to find Pre.
The writer found the site. Visitors had placed vintage running shoes from the 70s and 80s, coins, running ribbons, medals and bibs. Agates, sand dollars and sea shells were arranged neatly around the grave. Fans had collected them from the seashore and brought them to Pre. They might have run here from the ocean. The distance was a half marathon away...