Dave Driscoll found out that he was going to be the one of the directors for the first Litchfield Hills Road Race by reading about his new role in the newspaper.
Nonetheless, he was all in. He timed the first race, won by Bill Rodgers, in 1977. He ran the race, which went on to host Olympians and other top runners, for many years. He started the Litchfield Hills Track Club and coached thousands of young local runners, many of whom went on to run in college and beyond.
Driscoll was involved with the Litchfield Hills Road Race, which celebrated its 48th running in June, up until a few months before his death on Sunday at age 81.
“I don’t think we’ll ever get to know exactly how much he did,” said Beth Murphy, the president of the race’s board of directors, who knew Driscoll for over 30 years.
Bill Neller of Litchfield, the co-director of the race in the early years, remembers being in hot water the day after the selectman’s meeting in 1976 when the town decided to approve the race.
The idea began with the late Boston Globe sportswriter Joe Concannon, who wanted to bring the party atmosphere of the Falmouth Road Race and his Boston running friends to Litchfield, where he grew up and his mother still lived at the time.
He became friends with Neller and the two decided to propose a road race in June to the board of selectmen. Their first attempt got shot down, so the second time they hatched the idea of bringing Tommy Leonard, the loquacious running bartender at the Eliot Lounge in Boston and the founder of the Falmouth Road Race, with them. Leonard came and charmed everyone, including the newspaper reporter who wrote in the paper that there would be 2,000 runners (they had proposed 200) and that Driscoll would be the co-race director with Neller.
The problem was Neller didn’t know Driscoll that well but he knew Driscoll coached middle school cross country and girls track at the high school.
Also, he hadn’t actually asked him to be the race director yet.
“Tommy was all excited (at the meeting), he was saying the church bells will be ringing and we’ll fire the cannon and the girls will be dancing,” Neller said.
“(The first selectman) calls me (the next day) and chews me out. I told him, ‘No, we’re going to have 200 runners, not 2,000. I go get the paper and read it and go, ‘Oh man. Dave Driscoll’s going to be the co-race director.’
“Dave had no idea we were even having a race. I expected to call him and get chewed out again, but Dave was the exact opposite. He couldn’t have been kinder. He was all excited. He became an instant friend.”
Driscoll set up the finish line and timed the first race with a stopwatch and the help of two girls who called out bib numbers and wrote down names.
“That was our first timing company, Dave and two girls,” Neller said. “Beyond the race, what he has done for the track club – he’s coached kids from all around the state – his legacy is how many people did he affect?”
Driscoll, who started the middle school cross country team in the early ’70s and coached the Litchfield girls track teams to four state titles in the ’80s, brought the Junior Olympics track and cross country regional meets to Litchfield. He started the Whites Woods cross country summer series.
“It saddens me for the generations of kids who won’t get to experience what the prior generations got to experience,” said Michelle Cook, whose two children ran for the Litchfield Track Club and who helped Driscoll with the Junior Olympics and taking photos. “Who’s going to fill those shoes?”
Bobby Dwyer started running for the Litchfield Track Club when he was 9. He went on to run at Yale and ran the mile at the Millrose Games in 2004, finishing fifth. He is now 48 years old, a lawyer in Winsted, and still remembers the lessons he learned from Driscoll.
“(Driscoll) saw talent where others didn’t,” said Dwyer, who visited his coach Sunday before he died. “He knew how to pull the most out of a person.
Dave Driscoll at the start of the Litchfield Hills Road Race. (Photo by Michelle Cook)
“Our workouts were different – it wasn’t go to the track every day and do quarter repeats. He made it fun. We did quarter-mile, 200-meter repeats in the cemetery and somehow it became a history lesson, because Litchfield being Litchfield, there were all these prominent people buried there.”
Forman boys soccer coach Rob Andrulis met Driscoll in 1972 when he was 12 years old as a middle school cross country runner and ran track for Driscoll at Litchfield High.
“He’s the guy who got me to go to Southern Connecticut and run track,” Andrulis said. “I shared with him a couple weeks ago that he changed the course of my life back in 1978 when I was a senior in high school and didn’t know what I was going to do. I thought about going in the Army, but he said I got this school that’s interested in you. That’s how I got into coaching. They ran an inner-city track and field program in New Haven and they were looking for volunteers and I was hooked.”
Andrulis remembered piling into Driscoll’s Trans Am on a school night once with a few friends to go to watch the Millrose Games in New York City.
“He touched a lot of people,” he said. “I was lucky to have him as a coach and a mentor.”
Driscoll, who grew up in Litchfield and ran at Pennsylvania Military College (now Widener), also ran the road race for many years. His father Ken ran it the first year and when he died, his road race number (71) was retired and was hung on the wall at The Village, the bar and restaurant in the middle of town where Driscoll held court on the same barstool for decades.
Driscoll also helped save part of Litchfield Road Race history. When the Village was sold in the early ’90s to out-of-towners who tried to make it into an upscale place, the walls were cleared and the early road race pictures of Bill Rodgers and Joan Benoit Samuelson running at Litchfield were thrown in a dumpster. Driscoll rescued the pictures and when a group of people from Litchfield, Greg and Denise Raap and Dave and Thea Vigeant, bought The Village and restored it, the pictures went back up on the walls.
“I hope people realize he was as passionate about that community as he was about running,” Dwyer said. “He loved where he was from. With the road race, he loved that people came and saw this beautiful town that he grew up in.”
