LOVELAND HERALD
Your Community Press newspaper serving Loveland, Miami Township and other Northeast Cincinnati neighborhoods
WEDNESDAY, JULY 10, 2019 ❚ BECAUSE COMMUNITY MATTERS ❚ PART OF THE USA TODAY NETWORK
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It takes faith to run daily for 40 years Paul Daugherty
Cincinnati Enquirer USA TODAY NETWORK
“Bid me run, and I will strive with things impossible. And yea, get the better of them.” – Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar Father Lawrence Schottelkotte has been running for 40 years. Not on and off , not when he has felt like it, not only when the sun was shining and his feet weren’t dancing in a fi eld of blisters. Every day, since Aug. 10, 1979. On the day he presided over his sister’s funeral, he ran. On the day he offi ciated a wedding, he ran with the groom at 6 a.m. He kept running on the day in the ‘80s when he rolled across the hood of a Volkswagen Beetle, whose driver was turning left and not looking right. “I’m OK,” he said to the terrifi ed driver. “Just drive carefully.” He ran four miles from where a tornado was touching down in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He ran through what he believed was a crime scene in Hyde Park. Forty years is a long time unless you’re a rock. Forty years is a while to those of us required to put one foot in front of the other, day after day, lest we risk being lifetrampled. It’s more than 14,000 days, if you’re counting. Father Larry counts, sort of. He’s aware of his streak, yet mildly surprised anyone else would be interested. “I’m the only one to whom it’s meaningful,” he says. He’s mindful of maintaining it, even as he is 80 years old, and the term “run” has become relative. The well-practiced shuffl e he learned by watching the legendary distance man Bill Rogers has served him well. He never does less than a mile, enough to calm the skeptics who’d suggest Larry would count a light jog to the refrigerator as maintaining the streak. Usually, he manages four miles or fi ve. From All Saints Catholic Church in Kenwood, he starts north on Montgomery Road, turns left on Cooper, past Zig Zag, through Swaim Park to Monte. Left on Monte, to Wimbledon Court, where several All Saints parishioners live. And so on. You’ve heard about the notion of runners being a “community.” Dedicated souls, set apart by doggedness and shin splints. Father Larry is a community of one. No day passes without someone waving to him when he happens by. He has become as familiar in Montgomery as Montgomery Inn. Once, a passerby took his picture, then made it into a painting and presented it to him. Larry’s not terribly stuck on Larry, so even as he appreciated the artwork, he doesn’t know what he did with it.
Father Lawrence Schottelkotte, is pictured June 25, at All Saints Church in Kenwood. Schottelkotte has run every day for the last 40 years. KAREEM ELGAZZAR/THE ENQUIRER
He has never been seriously hurt, never blown out a knee, never sprained an ankle. His feet and toes resemble the root system of a redwood, a sight he blames not on running, but on his love of tennis in his 20s. He has tripped and fallen, a tumble that resulted in 13 stitches on the back of his hand. He did have a slight hamstring issue in the early 80s. “I hobbled through it,” Larry said. He’s 5-10 1⁄ 2 and 152 pounds, down from the 160 he owned for many years. His resting pulse rate is 48. When the weather permits, he runs shirtless. People gasp in pleasant surprise. He stopped competing against himself long ago. Between 1975 and 1984, Larry ran seven marathons. His goal was 3 hours, 20 minutes. His best time was 3:28. He has never owned a pedometer. “When I run, I run. I don’t want to make it more technical than that,” he says. The streak started after an off hand remark made by
one of Larry’s brothers in the Society of Marianists. “By the time you’re 35, you’ll be fat like the rest of us,” the guy said. Larry was 18 then, a recent graduate of Purcell High. “I remember thinking no, I won’t,” Larry recalls. He started running in June 1964. Five days a week, two miles a day, a way to get in better shape to play his favorite sport, tennis. When the church transferred him to Kalamazoo, the tennis faded. The running picked up. He has been at All Saints for 20 years. Father Larry holds no offi cial position there. He calls himself an associate pastor. He says Mass, makes home visits. He leads the sort of minimalist lifestyle you might expect. He eats very little red meat, has one piece of peanut butter toast with preserves for breakfast and usually no lunch. Larry has a three-year-old car with 5,200 See FAITH, Page 2A
Firehouse Grill in Blue Ash to become Firehouse Grill Brewery Polly Campbell Cincinnati Enquirer USA TODAY NETWORK
Back in the days before there were dozens of brewers in Cincinnati, there were just a few micro-breweries that also served food. The Queen City Group ran several, including Watson Bros. in Blue Ash from 19962006. It was in the large building that now is The Firehouse Grill. Now they're bringing the spirit of Watson Bros. back as an addition to the restaurant, which will now be known as Firehouse Grill Brewery. And they've got Watson's former assistant brewer to run it. Dan Shatto was at Watson Bros. from 2003-2006. He has spent fi ve years at MadTree in the meantime. They'll be installing a 7-barrel system. Shatto said they won't be up and brewing until mid-September, when they'll have three consistent beer off erings, probably an IPA, an amber ale and something lighter, along with another handful of styles in rotation. Firehouse Grill already serves a lot of taps of local beer and will continue to serve those. Their menu is beer-friendly, with sandwiches and fi sh and chips, burgers and entrees like meatloaf, pasta, brown sugar pork chops, ribeye, lemon-caper chicken. They have one of the nicer outdoor patios in the area, too. It's at 4785 Lake Forest Drive in Blue Ash.
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Dan Shatto, brewmaster at Firehouse Grill Brewery in Blue Ash. PROVIDED
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