Sandifer was special

By Scott Benjamin

The most successful runner in the 46-year history of the Roxbury Road Runners Club race series was also probably the most intelligent.

The late Ted Himes, a longtime Physical Education instructor at Western Connecticut State University (WCSU), once said that he and the other members of the Promotions Committee at the school were overwhelmed when they reviewed the grades that Ed Sandifer earned while an undergraduate at Dartmouth College – an Ivy League school, and the University of Massachusetts, where he earned his doctorate degree.

Sandifer appeared to know anything and everything about math, which he taught at WCSU from 1986 to 2009. He even spent some of his free days during the semester reading about math in the libraries at Yale.

He was the one that knew that other than the Fresh Pond series in Cambridge, Mass., there were more races per year at Roxbury than any other series on the East Coast.

Sandifer also was probably the most personable runner in the history of the series.

When this reporter was a volunteer assistant cross country coach at Henry Abbott Tech in Danbury and was in the parking lot at WCSU after the team had just won the Technical High School Conference Championship in October 2004, Sandifer wanted to know all the details. He also underscored that one of his students who had a younger brother on the Tech team had told him how much his brother appreciated his assistant coach.

Marty Ogden, a local cross country and track coach and an occasional participant in the Roxbury series, came for a race once when Sandifer was away at a math conference and noted that one of the things that he looked forward to at the races was the chance to talk with him. Following Sandifer’s stroke in 2009, Ken Merrick -who has won several season titles, but not nearly as many as Sandifer - noted that he missed the opportunity to be speaking with him while doing a cool-down run after the race.

Sandifer came to the area – moving to New Milford and then Newtown – in 1986 after teaching Math and coaching cross country at Western New England in Springfield, Mass.

He saw some sidewalk chalk marks while driving through the roads in Roxbury and read a news release on the series in a local newspaper and decided to become active.

He also was probably the most tireless runner in the series.

When he began running in the series, he was still in the early stages of a tremendous consecutive streak. From 1972 until his stroke 37 years later he never missed a day of running. Along the way he completed the Boston Marathon each year from 1973 through 2009. He regularly placed in his age group in local races, sometimes finishing right ahead or right behind Mark Goodwin, the former Bethel High School coach who is now coaching at Pomperaug High School in Southbury.

Upon running the Roxbury races, he befriended Dave Harvey, then of Bridgewater, who had just graduated from Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. Harvey was working a night shift and Sandifer had free time in his teaching schedule and they became running partners.

They sometimes would run the 7-mile Newtown course with the parade lap around the pond to make it a full seven miles.

Sandifer captured the Roxbury season title 12 times. Almost 13. Harvey won the 1988 title in the last race of the year by winning that run and getting bonus points for a course record. However, at the awards ceremony minutes later, Sandifer jokingly noted that Harvey hadn’t touched the bridge on the Judd’s Bridge Road course in August and his results should have been disqualified from that event.

Sandier initiated the staggered start race that the series has held since 1988 and was the assistant director of the series for nine years.

In 1991, he started giving the safety warnings before the races.

One time he said, “Be careful. If you get hit by a car, we lose you and we lose the series. And the series is what we care about.”

On August 31, we lost Ed. We still have the series, but Ed is someone who we will always care about.