Pilot runners. The Ryuns stayed with Jim and Jean. “They had two little kids and a busy household,” Anne says, “but they welcomed us with open arms! Jean gave us the family room upstairs, and I thought, how wonderful is this!?” The Ryuns saw the Grelles again in Bermuda, where famous old-timers gathered for the Dream Mile at the 1996 International Senior Games. It was a handicap race. Runners left the starting blocks serially, by age, and it still mattered who won. The 60-yearold Grelle got a 33-minute head start over the 49-year-old Ryun. Wes Santee, age 64, won. “Isn’t it just amazing,” Anne says, “how guys — after all these years — remember their exact times?” No. Track guys are like that. Today Jean and Jim Grelle live on the Oregon coast near Gearhart, in a home that Jean designed. The house has bench-to-ceiling windows facing a quarter mile of dune grass and a cluster of wind-sculpted pines between the house and the surf. Jim answers the door grinning and standing straight as a pencil in polo shirt and jeans, all of ten pounds heavier than his Olympic running weight of 155. At 76, he looks fit enough to run to Astoria for coffee and back, but Jean is taking orders at the latte machine and anyway his feet are shot. Jim still has his original issue knees and hips, but 28 years ago he went to the doctor suspecting stress fractures in his feet; xrays were negative, but the doctor said he had the feet of a 96-year-old man. It’s no mystery why. Since age 15 he had put 68,000 miles on each of those dogs, almost all of it before he was in his low thirties. He’s had repairs on an enlarged heart, too, but he’s good to golf and bike. But if talk were a competitive sport, Grelle wins the distance event. At a table close to the ocean-facing windows, he talks one whole day and half of the next. Not much of it is about him. Nor is there any indication an Olympic runner lives in this home. No trophies. The photos accompanying this story came from a pile of loose shots in a box above the garage. On the coffee table here is a jumbo picture book on Navy fighter pilots, and the first topic of conversation is his former student Mike McCabe, recently retired admiral of the U.S. Sixth Fleet and now President of Ryan International Airlines. “Write about him,” Grelle says. “There’s your hero. They brought in Mike to coach Tom Cruise in Top Gun. McCabe was Top Gun. He was the ace fighter pilot over Viet Nam one
year, by vote of his peers. Mike took Jimmy and me out from San Diego for five days of Pacific Ocean war games, and we watched… About McCabe, he talks, and about Dave White, a corporate lawyer in Hillsboro who played rock music with Johnny Limbo and the Lug Nuts. About Don Bowler, a vice president at U.S. Bank. About Paul Kirkland, who owned and operated Olallie Lake Resort. About Kent Nedderman ’71
and Jim Nuccio ’72 and others. You’d think these guys were his sons, he’s so proud of what they’ve done. Jean stays out of sight but maybe not out of earshot. She comes down from the loft to make sandwiches. She leaves them on the kitchen counter for us and drives away, while Jim talks. This is epic and animated discourse, including the natural history of a harrier hawk cruising low over the grassy dunes outside, and the domestic habits of a doe and her fawn that lope past the picture window. When Jean reAutumn 2012 43
turns, in late afternoon, the sandwiches are still on the kitchen counter, undisturbed. When pressed, Jim will talk about himself. With sandwiches now and a glass of red wine, he winds it up and the stories roll. The man is a wicked mimic of voices and dialect. He has a Scandinavian accent when he needs it. He does Cassius Clay to perfection. You can actually see Jim McKay saying Hi Jimmy, and hear the growly Bill Bowerman. Story is the staff of life. And story was the currency of exchange on Jim’s 70th birthday as a dozen of his Pilot runners gathered at the Grelle home to celebrate. Jean still calls them the boys, those fat-free long-legged specimens who used to show up at her home on Sunday mornings. After their run, she’d serve cookies and punch while “the boys went around holding babies.” It’s family, is what it is. The family dynamic sets this apart from what you’d expect from even the best of coach-to-athlete or guru-to-student relationships. This is family-like fun and friendship where Dad is professor emeritus. McCabe claims to have used Grelle’s motivational tricks on his Navy fighter pilots. The Ryuns called to sing “Happy Birthday.” When Dave White said Jim was his hero, his mentor, Grelle backed away in horror and said White could not kiss him. “He was a strategist, a great tactician,” says Mike McCabe. “But looking back on it, I think his genius was for human psychology. He knew when to push. You’re not really focused, he’d say. You can do better. He was a fantastic coach and a great human being. We’ve had a lifelong friendship — my most cherished friendship, bar none.” “Jim couldn’t care less about his own fame,” says Dave White. “After I ran in the 1971 nationals at Hayward Field, I sat with him at a table in the infield. This was the summer before the Berlin Olympics, and the place was packed. The guy on the loudspeaker said, TODAY WE HAVE IN ATTENDANCE THE MOST PROLIFIC SUB-FOUR-MINUTE MILER IN AMERICA, THE OLYMPIAN AND FORMER U OF O TRACK STAR, JIM GRELLE!!! “Fans went berserk. Jim nudged my elbow and said, Stand up, White…” n Robin Cody is the author of the novel Ricochet River and the nonfiction Voyage of a Summer Sun, about canoeing the Columbia from source to mouth. His most recent book is a collection of essays, Another Way the River Has.