Elbridge Stevens

“Never look back!”

There was a “running boom” in the 1920s and Elbridge Stevens, Gouldsboro-born and Bangor-raised, was one of its stars. And just as Boston was seemingly the center of the 1970s running boom it was also a Mecca in the 1920s.

Stevens moved from Bangor to Boston in 1919, at the age of 16. He started running with his older brother, Clifford, who reputedly ran with Andrew Sockalexis, the great Penobscot Olympic marathoner. At first, the older boys left Stevens behind, but he showed determination, and then talent, and he was soon in another league.

He found a mentor and friend in Fred Faller, former 10,000 meter Olympian, and by 1921, after only two years of running, Stevens finished 3rd in the New England 5 Mile Championships on the Harvard track. In 1922, now running for the Boston Athletic Association, he was the first BAA finisher and 3rd overall in the New England AAU 10 Mile Championship with a time of 54:09.

Many of the races in the 1920s were "handicap" races. This theoretically allowed all runners a chance at victory (and practically speaking facilitated betting). The slower and unproven runners started first, followed by those who had earned a handicap by establishing themselves in other races. The top runner was the "scratch" man, meaning he was the last to leave the start. The major award, often a large silver cup, was awarded to the first person across the finish line, but there was also a "time prize," usually a watch or a leather travel bag, for the fastest time over the course. These races were very popular and, in Boston, attracted thousands of spectators. There would be anywhere from 50 to 100 runners in the important races, but all of the runners were serious about winning, and many came from fairly long distances to compete.

In 1921, Stevens brought Fred Faller up with him on Labor Day to run a 10 mile handicap race in Bangor. Faller, as an Olympian, started at "scratch," while Stevens, the hometown boy returning, was next to scratch. Faller finished 2nd, while Stevens took a close 3rd, both just behind the winner who, in the handicap format, had started the race several minutes ahead of them.

Stevens returned to Bangor to live in 1923-24. By then, he was considered a serious possibility for the 1924 Olympics. The trials were scheduled for Harvard Stadium in June, 1924, but his training regime was broken by a bout with chicken pox, and he never competed in the trials.

International dreams on the back burner, Elbridge moved back to Boston and became a power in the local road race scene. One of the most prestigious events was the Michael J. O'Connell 10-Mile Open Handicap Race. Stevens won this race in both 1926 and 1928, and was 5th in 1920, each time placing 2nd in time elapsed. In 1926, he started 6:30 after the first runner, Dave Kneeland, a veteran who had placed 2nd in the Boston Marathon in 1914, left the mark. Kneeland held the lead for most of the race, but was passed by Stevens at the 8-mile point. Stevens finished with a 60:06 "elapsed time," but a 53:36 actual time. Only the scratch man ran the course faster.

Stevens was well established as a runner by the mid 1920s, and at the 1928 Michael J. O'Connell race, he and Dorchester Club teammate Jimmy Zinck started next to scratch with identical 4:45 handicaps. Together, they passed the entire field – except for scratch man George Dodge, the only one to run a faster actual time than they did – with Stevens pulling away at the very end to win. His actual time that year was 53:01.

In 1930, this time with a field of 70 runners, Stevens ran his fastest time over the course, 52:13. Once again he had the second best actual time, yet that year finished 5th overall, 40 seconds behind the winner who had left the starting line a full 3:15 before Stevens.

The first place prizes were huge, ornate silver cups, that reflect the popularity of these events, and Elbridge's daughter, Barbara Neville, still keeps his trophy case at the Stevens family home on Fifth Street in Bangor. Several of the cups stand over two feet high, with the race and the winner's name engraved on the front. Elbridge also won nine of the coveted time awards in major handicap races, and Ms. Neville still winds one of the watches every morning.

Despite the popularity of running in the 1920s, the whole world did not necessarily smile on runners. Stevens worked as a delivery man for the Cambridge Laundry. One Saturday, he started his rounds early and, with help from a brother-in-law or two, managed to finish in time to hide the company truck in his father-in-law's garage and run a race. He won and then rushed back to the Cambridge Laundry with the truck, in time for the usual finish of his route. However, rather than let him go right home, his boss wanted to show Stevens his new radio. Stevens had never heard a radio before and, since commercial radio did not begin until November 1920, the boss was understandably proud of his purchase. Stevens and the boss went into the inner office. After a moment of warm-up hum, the first thing that Stevens heard over the radio, any radio, was the announcement of his victory in the race. The astonished boss fired him on the spot!

By 1925, Stevens was running for the Dorchester Club, the most prestigious of the Boston clubs, under the coaching tutelage of Bill McVicar. Membership was by invitation only. In addition to fielding teams at the handicap races and other local road races, the clubs would go head-to-head every fall in the A.A. U. New England Cross Country Championships to see who would represent the region in the National Cross Country Championships at Van Courtland Park in New York. Although Dorchester dominated the New England team competition and won the national event in 1920, New York Clubs won the nationals the rest of the decade.

In 1929, Dorchester swept the New England crown and went to New York with an excellent team of mixed veterans and younger runners. The team captain was Smilin' Jimmy Henigan, a member of the 1920 Championship team and perhaps the greatest 5- and 10-mile runner of his generation, but now graying and nearing 40. There were three young, up-and-coming runners including 23-year-old Eino Heikkila. Rounding out the team's top five, at the ripe old age of 26, was "veteran star" Elbridge Stevens. However, the New England A.A. U. "nearly decided that it was futile to try to lift the national team trophy from the New Yorkers, and the expenses of the Dorchester Club were granted grudgingly." Stevens noted that he was given only $25 for all his hotel and meal expenses at the nationals.

Race day was wet and foggy. It had rained hard the day before, and the course was very muddy. The race was won for the second year in a row by Gus Moore of the University of Pittsburgh, one of the top college runners of his day, in a time of 31:10. Most of the runners fell at least once, some as often as five or six times, and all were covered with mud by the end, but in the last two miles, two Dorchester runners, Elbridge Stevens and Eino Heikkila, emerged from the pack of the nation's top cross country runners with Heikkila 2nd in 31:58 and Stevens 3rd in 32:05. On the strength of these finishes, the Dorchester Club easily out-pointed their closest competitors for the team prize and were National Champions once again.
Elbridge did not race much after 1930. The Depression had begun, and he had a family to support. He moved back to Bangor permanently and became the credit manager for Webber Oil.

But he was not forgotten. As late as 1940, Clarence DeMar, perhaps America's greatest marathoner, came to Bangor to run the Labor Day race and see Elbridge Stevens. DeMar won, and in the photo featured in the Bangor Daily News article about the race, Clarence DeMar is pictured with a young Barbara (Stevens) Neville, the daughter of his old friend and competitor, Elbridge Stevens.

Elbridge Stevens passed away in 1995 at the age of 92. Although he did not run in his later years, he kept in shape by walking. When his great granddaughters became swimming and running athletes for Old Town High School, the old handicap racer used to tell them: "Never look back, you're only concerned with who is ahead of you!"