Belated RIP to a great Dawg, Joe Litsch

[BillVol]

Have been looking at old Peachtree Road Race stories on Newspapers.com. Went back to the first one in 1970. Only 150 runners. Legendary UGA track athlete/coach Spec Towns shot the starter's pistol to start the very first Peachtree Road Race. Gov. Jimmy Carter started the race the next year. But there were some great stories in the AJC on the race written by Joe Litsch. I'd never heard the name, and I'm a newspaper dork to the core. What a full life he lived. I thought a name we should all know.

Edit: Only 110 finished the race. They are known as the "Original 110."

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[d-dawg]

Very interesting gentleman. I ran the peachtree 25 times before a bad case of planter fasciitis put an end to it.

 

[BillVol]

My wife and I are going to run it in July, before a milestone birthday for me. I'll be turning 30 later this year -- LOL. About the 10th time I've run it. Congrats on finishing it 25 times. For me, the big story every year is Mr. Bill Thorn, who is the only person to have completed every Peachtree. He's in his 90s now. I hope he can do it again and many more. https://www.atlantanewsfirst.com/2022/07/04/2022-ajc-peachtree-road-race-results/

 

[d-dawg]

Yea,I read where there was one guy still running that had done em all.
There was about a 100 runners in the first one and they didn’t hand out tee shirts

There was always a lot of beer trucks in piedmont park after the race to soothe your pain when I first started running it.

 

[atlanta cock#]

Ran it once. Have moved on to other adventures.

 

[JCarbo76]

I did not realize he had passed away. But I'm sorry to hear the news. In the early 70s, he was the high school editor of the Atlanta Constitution or Journal. I knew him peripherally when he covered my basketball games. Good guy, who lived a great life.

He made his picks for who would win that week's football games, and one week picked his alma mater, Jonesboro High School, to beat its arch-rival, Forest Park.

Forest Park won by a very large margin (68-6, as I recall), and the coaches led the team in chanting "Joe Litsch, Son of a B_____" on the bus ride back to the school.

 

[BillVol]

I did not realize he had passed away. But I'm sorry to hear the news. In the early 70s, he was the high school editor of the Atlanta Constitution or Journal. I knew him peripherally when he covered my basketball games. Good guy, who lived a great life.

He made his picks for who would win that week's football games, and one week picked his alma mater, Jonesboro High School, to beat its arch-rival, Forest Park.

Forest Park won by a very large margin (68-6, as I recall), and the coaches led the team in chanting "Joe Litsch, Son of a B_____" on the bus ride back to the school.

What a great story! There was another story Joe wrote on Peachtree when Lt. Gov. Lester Maddox was the starter. I believe it was the year after Carter. 1972 or so. He wrote that as Maddox was about to shoot the gun, a "mddle aged" runner yelled, "Hey Lester, why don't you use that gun on yourself?" Maddox replied, "I'll do it if you win, chief."