Just two days ago, I wrote in this space about Jon Auty's mission in the 2022 TCS New York City Marathon. The seventy-eight-year-old retired attorney from North Haledon, New Jersey was making his first trip across the five boroughs in forty years. And he was doing it to honor the memory of his "absolutely perfect wife", Bev, who cancer took, in October 2021, from her husband of fifty-four years and her family.
If it was easy, then anyone could do it. I know from personal experience just how readily that adage applies to running a marathon. So does Jon Auty.
It took him eight hours to complete the race on Sunday but complete it he did. He began his journey under warm, muggy conditions on Staten Island at 11 am. He ended it under the cover of darkness in Central Park at 7 pm. He ended it in the company of fifty-four-year-old Tommy Mitchell of Atlanta, Georgia. The two kept one another company, and served as one another's inspiration, for the final fifteen miles. They crossed the finish line together, hands joined, and arms upraised.
Tommy Mitchell and Jon Auty
NYC Marathon Finish Line
November 6, 2022
He ran. He walked. He crawled. He made it. His commitment to keeping his promise to Bev triumphed over his own feelings of mental anguish and physical discomfort.
-AK
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