y wife Joy and I had dinner the other night with our old friends, Sara and Gary Heard. Having known them both for close to 15 years, I thought I knew everything there was to know. But I was wrong, and I was delighted to get to know them even better than before. This is to say nothing about getting to know their charming 2-year-old daughter Marjorie. I hope you will enjoy meeting them in this profile as much as we did over dinner.

Growing up and Going to School — Sara

  was born in Framingham, Massachusetts (mile 8 of Boston!) and lived there for a year, followed by a move to Skokie, Illinois. After five years in the Midwest (during which we spent six months in Atlanta) we moved to Salem, Massachusetts until I was in seventh grade, when my father was transferred from Boston to Washingon and we moved to Northern Virginia. I went to college in Pennsylvania and moved to New York City after college.

In High School (in Virginia) I was a drama nerd. I was in all the school plays. I wasn't very good at acting, but I was a very dedicated set-builder, so they kept giving me minor parts to keep me involved.My brother — I have just one older brother — was 2 years ahead of me and he was in the Science Fiction Dungeons and Dragons group and I was on the periphery of that group.

I went to Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, a small liberal arts college. I was an Art History major. In those days, I was smart (but I am no longer). [Editor] Hah! — come off it. You are still smart. You married Gary.
That has been my biggest accomplishment in life!

I never considered competing in school sports in high school. Title IX hadn't yet taken much effect in the culture, and it was easy for girls to skip sports all together. Also, I went to a very cliquey high school similar to the one in The Breakfast Club, where athletes were a subculture, and it you didn't mix with them socially, you didn't consider playing sports either. I did start running on my own during college and ran my first two races in Washington during vacations. A Bonne Bell women-only 10k was first, if that doesn't date me too much! I entered races that were longer than I had ever run before as an incentive, just to see if I could finish the distance.

I had never lived in a city and I thought it would be fun for a year, and then I'd figure out where to move, whether back to Northern Virginia or maybe Philadelphia. So after college I moved to New York City. I was just 22. When I got here, I found a job substitute teaching — I did that for the first academic year, and then I did random other things — I worked weekends at the Museum of Natural History shop and I worked in Barnes & Noble for a while — I did a lot of stuff.

[Editor]But you were an Art History major, not an Education major.
True, but anyone with a bachelor’s degree could be a substitute, at least at that time.

Growing up and Going to School — Gary

  was born in Hartford, Connecticut and grew up in Manchester, which is just across the river. I went to Manchester High School, where I played sports: baseball and soccer. I was also in a singing group — the “Round Table Singers”. That's where I learned how to sing — I had a good voice. I have a sister Laurie who is 2½ years younger and a brother Peter, who is 8 years younger.

I went to Upsala College which was in East Orange, New Jersey. Interestingly, in the mid 90s, Upsala went into bankruptcy and is no longer in existence. But when I was going there it was one of the finest small liberal arts colleges in the country.

In college I only did intramural sports; I’m not sure why. I played intramural football and basketball. I got a scholarship to sing, so I sang in the Upsala College Choir. It was a traveling choir, and during breaks we would travel to the Midwest and down south — one long trip took us to New Orleans and through South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee.

I did a lot of other things in College besides studying — I was a resident assistant, class president and president of the student senate — I really got into campus politics. I was politically active at Upsala in the student rights movement and earlier in high school, in the civil rights movement.

[Editor] You played football and basketball, which involve running, but did you do any running sports like track or cross country?
At that point I was a smoker, so running was not on the agenda. Smoking inhibits running, and I didn’t give up smoking till I was 37. By then I had already started running. I started running in my early 30s because my brother challenged me to run in the Manchester Road Race — one of the oldest road races in the country. I concluded that smoking was going to kill me one day unless I stopped (it still may). Once I gave it up I became more serious. So I would say I really started running competitively at about 40 years of age.

I graduated from Upsala in 1970 — and there a little bit of history here: I was #24 in the draft for the Vietnam War, so I knew I’d be drafted once I got out of college. So I didn’t make plans for graduate school — there were no deferments available. I decided to join the U.S. Army Reserves up in East Hartford and began going to meetings. I was scheduled to go on active duty in the fall of 1970.

After graduation,I got married and was doing roofing work just to earn a little money before I went away on active duty. But then I had an accident on the job and lost my finger.

[Editor] I never knew you lost your finger — let me see — Hey, you did!
Many people don’t notice. I had a very kind doctor who wrote up a report about it, for the reserves. There must have been rules and regulations about this sort of thing. So although I was officially in and about to be deployed, because of my finger I was suddenly out — honorably discharged.

I had planned to go to law school and had taken the LSAT. But because of the draft I had postponed those dreams. So here I am suddenly discharged from the Army, married and have no job. So through family connections, I found a job at Chubb Insurance. And as they say, the rest is history.

I spent 39 years at Chubb — I liked the company, and I forgot about going to law school. But I was still interested in politics and activism, and I did eventually go to graduate school much later — at NYU in Political Science. And just to keep me busy, my daughter Beth was born in 1976.

At Chubb, I started in New Jersey, and the following year I worked in San Francisco for a 3-year-stint. Then I was transferred back to Jersey and from that point on, I spent most of my time going back and forth between offices in New Jersey and New York — with one stint in Washington D.C. I held a variety of different positions.

The Manchester Road Race — my debut run — was in about 1982 or 1983, when I had come back East. I lived in Westfield, New Jersey until 1985 and then moved to New York City when my home base was transferred here. And I’m still here 24 years later. I lived in Tribeca for almost 20 years and now we’re in Park Slope, Brooklyn, where we moved 4 years ago.

Getting into Running — Sara

  had always planned on running a marathon before turning 25, which I did: New York 1990, at age 24. I was taking Bob Glover's classes through the NYRR(C), but they were getting more and more costly and crowded and unfriendly. I heard running clubs provided similar work-outs for much less money, and also social opportunities. I overheard someone in the park say “Oh the Flyers, they have a lot of parties.” So I thought, that was the club for me. I can’t remember when it was, but Heidi Chadwick was the queen of the Flyers — around 1995. I had gone to Craftsbury Running Camp in Vermont in 1991 and 1992 and Cliff Held was the head coach there, and I joined the Flyers a few years later, but it was a coincidence he was the Flyer's coach.

[Editor] I remember recruiting people for the 1997 Hood to Coast Relay. You were one of the first to respond.
Yes, you put a notice in the Newsletter — it was almost a year ahead of time — the fall of 1996. I accepted early but always assumed you'd put together the fastest team possible, not just the first to accept. So as the months went on and the team filled up, I kept expecting to hear that you'd replaced me with someone faster. I was pretty slow back then. Thank you for not replacing me!!!

When all was said and done, we did seven Hood to Coasts — '97, '98, '99, '01, '03, '04 and '06. For the last few, Gary and I organized our own team. Many of the runners from those early H2Cs are still great friends. It’s funny with Ann Glackin (Patrick): she has 2 beautiful kids but I’ve never met them, but Ann says that’s OK, I have plenty of friends who know my kids — I’m glad I have some friends who don’t know them.

Getting into Running — Gary

lthough I was running a bit at the end of my smoking years and gradually got more serious, it was not till the mid 1990s that things came together. I ran my first marathon in 1995 and met somebody from the Flyers — I don’t remember who. I noticed them on the subway going up to the New York Public Library for the marathon buses. I decided it would be kind of neat to join a running club and meet some people and get a little support for my running, so I joined the Flyers in 1996.

I had been doing various distances from 5Ks to 10Ks to Half-marathons before my first marathon, and I’ve run 4 New Yorks altogether, the last in 2003. I also ran 4 Bostons: 1998, 1999, 2001 and 2005. Sara ran in 2000, which was when we got Red Sox tickets — you were up there running too. You and I had both qualified in ’99 at Niagara Falls and you ran Boston in ‘00 but I deferred till ’01. My final marathon was Boston in 2005. I had qualified for that in Ottawa in 2004. In the Flyers, I was Master Runner of the Year in 1997, and Veteran Runner of the Year in 1999.

As Sara said, we did 7 Hood to Coast Relays. The last 3 were teams we organized. Since then we haven’t been able to get in. It’s getting tougher each year.

From my first years in the Flyers, I remember Jerry Flower, Tim Decker and you. Of course the first real experience getting to know people was the 1997 Hood to Coast. That was a really good thing and it blew us all away; it produced lifelong friendships. I’m still in contact with Tom Dessereau, Dean Thomas, Sarah Schwartz and Tom Paradiso. And our circle expanded — there was Philip Milio, Julie Geisler, Monika, Francine, ... an endless list. It’s been a great 15 years with some super friends.

How We Met — Sara

  first met Gary at one of the get-togethers before the first Hood to Coast Relay in 1997, which you were so good as to organize so that I might find a husband. I was intrigued by him — I thought of Gary as the “fast old guy”, but I didn’t really get to know him since he was in the other van. Over the next year I would spot him at Flyer parties and talk to him for a while, but he was seeing someone at the time: we would have casual conversations and it would come up: “Have you seen such-and-such a movie?”, “Oh yeah, the woman I’m seeing liked it a lot ...” and so I would roll my eyes and move on.

Then after the second Hood to Coast in 1998, Gary invited the entire H2C crowd to a weekend get-together at a beach cottage in Connecticut he had rented.

[Editor] I was there, was I not? I remember we had lobster dinner.
Yeah, you were there and Sarah Schwartz and Tom Desserreau. I was the only one (other than Gary) to arrive Friday, and he offered to pick me up at the Amtrak station and mentioned he'd have his dog with him. I pictured a lab or a German Shepherd — some manly dog. So I get there and he's with this fluffy little girly-dog, a Shih Tzu. It turned out it was his daughter's dog, but she had left it behind when she moved away. Not the image I had imagined when I saw them at the train station! And sometime during the weekend he casually said something like “Oh, the woman I was seeing until recently ...” And I thought, “Aha, this is my chance!”

[Editor] Was Gary aware of your interest at the time?
No, he had no idea that I was interested in him — he would never know when women were interested in him. I would say something like “You know so-and-so has a crush on you” and he would never believe it.

I had promised myself I would be more direct if I got interested in a man, so I got home from that beach weekend Sunday night, and on Monday morning I mailed Gary a vintage postcard of Mt. Hood (where the Hood to Coast Relay starts). Except instead of saying "Thank you for the lovely weekend" I wrote (and yes, I remember this verbatim): "Dear Gary, What I don't understand is, considering how fond I am of you and how much I enjoy your company, why do I always have to go out of town to see you? Thank you for a lovely weekend." On Wednesday evening my phone rang, I answered, and a voice said (also verbatim): "Sara? It's Gary. I got your postcard. I've been wondering when you were going to ask me out." Calendars were discussed, and the rest is history.

Getting Serious

e started dating in September 1998 just before Gary turned 50. We were “under the radar” for a while until the January 1999 awards dinner, when we “came out”.

People always ask if it matters that we are both runners. I think "yes", if you are serious — not necessarily fast — about running, it is important, because otherwise you just aggravate people: “Why do you have to go to bed early? Why can’t we do such and such on Saturday? ...” The “why” of it just makes it easier with another runner.

But we never really ran together — Gary would abuse me because he thought I was too slow on the up hills. But he actually paced me at the 1999 Las Vegas Marathon when I was trying to qualify for Boston. He was about 20 minutes faster that I was, so it was easy for him to pace me, but he wasn’t so fast that he would take me out at some crazy speed. I did qualify, though we were ready to kill each other by the end — but we succeeded in the goal.

Getting Married

e had dated for 18 months and I thought that was long enough. But I gave Gary a six-month extension, and I was going to break up with him November 1st if he hadn’t proposed — we were going to the Chicago Marathon in October 2000 (and I didn’t want to pay for my own Hotel Room), so after Chicago if he hadn’t proposed, he would be history. We talked about it in the spring and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to get married again, but he didn’t want the pressure of an absolute deadline — I had the deadline in my head but he didn’t know what the exact deadline was, though he knew it was coming.

I understood — I think for any one who has been divorced, it’s a great leap of faith to get married again. I think what actually convinced him is he said to me one day “If I can’t go through with getting married, can we at least stay friends?” I said, not only can we NOT stay friends, but I’m keeping the friends — YOU have to get new friends. And I think it was the threat of losing his friends that made him decide to marry me. But you can ask him about that.

Well, Gary beat the deadline by a couple of months and proposed in September 2000 while we were on vacation in that same beach cottage community where the "fateful" weekend took place. I planned on basking in the romantic solitude and announcing the engagement when we got back to real life. When Gary dropped me off at home on Saturday night, it was too late to phone people. The next day, Sunday, we had a race in Brooklyn (part of the MAC series, so several Flyers were there). When I had to leave for the race it was too EARLY to phone people. So my parents didn't yet have the good news. I showed up at the race wearing a diamond ring, and when nobody noticed, Gary brought it to the attention of the other Flyers. Later, my mother took great umbrage at the fact that my Flyer friends got the news before she did, and she told me, in all seriousness, "When you get pregnant, I want to know before Ed Altman." She got her wish.

We were married on February 10, 2001. We just told people to show up at Gary's church on the Upper West Side and and we would all walk the two blocks down to Carmines. Gary and I had a great time, which I'm told is unusual for the bride and groom.

[Editor] You think it’s important that you’re both runners, but I would say it’s important NOT to do everything together — so what do you do that’s separate?
Gary plays golf and I played golf a few times before we had Marjorie and hope to resume again before too long. But I’ll never love it the way he does. If we go on vacation to some golf area for a week, he’d want to play 4 times, and I would play maybe once. He goes to church and sings in the choir and I don’t, we both allow each other time to do things apart. And at this time most of my activities are toddler-based.

And as for those "toddler based" activities, raising Marjorie is actually more fun than I thought it would be. I thought it would be fun when she turned 3 or so, when she could be someone to talk to, but it was actually fun from the start — other than the first couple of months which were a blur. We are blessed with a very agreeable child.

And Gary's help is great — he’s more help than I expected him to be. I thought we would follow strict traditional gender roles. But Gary does much more than his share at home, considering it's due to his hard work that I'm able to be at home with Marjorie full time. I think a lot of fathers have to do more now because their wives are working. And being home, to me, is not a burden — it’s a blessing.

And I think that although there's a lot of "equality" in the roles we have, equality does not mean "the same". There’s a difference between equality and sameness. We each do a share of the work, but we don’t each do the same chores. We both really appreciate what the other contributes to our family life, and that appreciation is much better (I think) than a strict accounting of who did half the laundry vs. who did half the lawn mowing, or whatever.

Moving On — Gary

[Editor] So Gary, after being retired from Chubb for just few months, you started up again in a new company . Why was that?
I just felt the urge to keep busy and do what I have always loved to do. But I also wanted to be flexible so I could be a full partner in raising my family. Now I’m back in the insurance business, but with a small company called Synapse. I work in the greater New York area as a wholesale environmental insurance broker. I mainly work with retail agents, helping them put together insurance programs for their clients. I control my hours and can do a lot of work from home. It’s ideal for me and I’m very happy to be back in the business AND to be able to spend lots of quality time with my wife and daughter.

And if that were not enough to keep me busy, my daughter Beth, who was married 6 years ago, is now pregnant — so my first grandchild will arrive in October. [Sara, in the background] Yikes! That will make me a grandmother!

Moving On — Sara

[Editor] You’ve given up your job and your running to raise a family, that’s pretty wonderful — but it’s tough work.
Well, I don’t really find it tough. I was never crazy about working. I was not one who had to adjust to no longer having power in the work place — I have no complaints. True, you don’t get much of a sense of accomplishment in the short term. Like the joke says: I have this long-term-project — I’m creating a human being. I just have to wait 20 more years to see how it turns out. I keep telling Marjorie when she’s very mushy and affectionate, “You know in 12 years you’re going to hate me, believe it, you really will.”

As for running, I did a 5K at the Bronx Zoo — it must have been in April — pushing the stroller, which is not a jogging stroller. I figured I would walk half and run half but I actually ran about 80%. I just walked up the hills. I was surprised that I was able to do that.

Mostly I’m biking. When we’re in Brooklyn I bike around Prospect Park for exercise with the baby in her seat. But when we’re up at out beach house, I bike to get around. Gary will take the car and be off doing his insurance business, so if we want to go anywhere, we to go by bike. So I’ve been getting a lot of exercise.

Looking Ahead — Gary

ell, the numbers say I'm getting older. But I don’t really feel older. I still play softball on a championship team, playing at the same level as 20-year-olds are playing, and I’m still working out and working hard — I‘m still competing, if you will.

But when you look at race times, some of my motivation for running is gone, because I can’t really get any faster. But I do run some smaller races like those in Prospect Park and often place 1st or 2nd in my age group, and I also run a race in Niantic CT — a little hometown race — in which I’ve placed 2nd in my age group every year. It’s funny, for the last several years the top 3 racers in my group have placed in exactly the same order. That provides some good motivation.

With Marjorie, my available time is reduced — there’s just not enough time in the day to devote to serious running. Let’s put it this way — I choose to do a number of things with my time which might otherwise be spent running — but that’s my choice.

Looking Ahead — Sara

e have a beach house is in Niantic CT, the next town over from where we went with the H2C folks 1998. In the winter we go about 1 weekend a month. But lately, since Gary can now work from anywhere, we’ve been going there a lot. We will often stay for a week, so just about every month we go for a solid week plus the other weekends. But right now we’re in rental season and we have it rented out. We’ve rented it out for 5 weeks this year, which is just enough to pay the property taxes. It seems like a great idea when people start sending you checks in April, but then when the time comes I'm like, "Wait! I have to let them use my house for a week?!"

Marjorie loves it. I think she associated it first with Gary being home every day. Remember, when he was still working at Chubb he wasn’t around that much. And she really loves the water.

When Gary was (briefly) retired, it was good: I got used to having him around — I never had 12 straight hours of toddler care — so it was good in that sense. But there are disadvantages to being home together all day. I felt I had a witness so I couldn't just slack off and watch bad reality shows on Bravo during nap time. And another thing: I'm a natural grazer and never really eat lunch. If Gary's home, he'll make a sandwich and sit down with a plate and a napkin and a glass of milk, whereas I might grab some left-overs and eat standing in the kitchen. So he knows not only am I not making my own lunch, I'm sure as heck not making his.

Now that he's back to work, it’s still good, but it’s different. Marjorie and I get into our routine and at the end of the day he calls and says when he’s coming home, and we'll go out and play and wait for Daddy to get home. I kind of like being in charge during the day and then having the great homecoming.

Last Words: did you ever think you would be the parents of such a beautiful 2-year-old, say when you joined the Flyers?

[Sara] I've been wanting it all my life!

[Gary] I knew it was in the cards, but it took a lot of work and a great deal of thought to get here. But I wouldn’t trade it for the world!