by Elliott Denman
Art Hall 4th presents the awards to Tony Gulotta ( L) & Jeff Benjamin (R) – Pic courtesy of Xcellence Photos
Elliott Denman wrote this piece on the first Art Hall Community Service Award, and more importantly, the story of Art Hall. Elliott Denman, is a 1956 Olympian and a long time writer for American Track & Field, and RunBlogRun. We thank him for this piece.
BENJAMIN, GULOTTA SALUTED WITH PRESENTATION OF
STATEN ISLAND’S FIRST ART HALL COMMUNITY SERVICE AWARD
By ELLIOTT DENMAN
September 12, 2011 ranks as one of the saddest days in the history of the running sport in the
Metropoltan New York Area.
Art Hall – his full name was Arthur Hall III – left us that day, and left many of us in shock.
His gallant heart – which had carried him to decades of running success at all distances up to the marathon, and burnished a reputation that put him right up with the greatest of the greats in the Metro vicinity – at last gave out.
The official cause was heart failure. He was 64, far too young, He still had miles and miles to go before he’d earned a rest. But “The Man Upstairs” ruled otherwise. The Official Finish Line Judge we’ll all eventually meet had made his call.
Arthur Hall Sr. and Arthur Hall Jr., his father and grandfather, had played their own prominent roles in Metro Area track – distance running, racewalking and all else – but it was Arthur The Third who carried the family banner to its greatest heights.
All the Halls ran and walked and displayed their talents in races staged throughout NYC and beyond, but it was on Staten Island that they dug their deepest roots. They affiliated with such clubs as the Staten Island Harriers, the North Shore Track Club and the New York Pioneer Club, but it was as a member of the New York Road Runners Club, from its earliest days as an organizer of Central Park-only events to its current status as a global monolith, that Art Three made his greatest mark.
In addition to serving as a member of the NYRR Board, lending his expert guidance from the top, he played a dominant racing role in years and years of major NYRR-staged events.
How good was he? How fast was he?
Answers: Just about as good as they came, just about as fast as the best.
As the oft-honored running writer – and former competitor – Peter Gambaccini, told it, in an NYRR farewell salute, at Arthur The Third’s passing:
“Art moved to the West Brighton section of Staten Island in 1970 and honed his running talent by logging high mileage and racing relentlessly. He finished in the top five at the New York City Marathon four times in the 1970s and placed in the top 20 at Boston in 1976. He ran his lifetime best time of 2:22:07 at Boston in 1978. Art also won the 1975 Penn Relays Marathon and still holds Staten Island records at five distances.
“Throughout the 1970s and ’80s Art regularly competed with many of the country’s top distance runners such as Ted Corbitt, Gary Muhrcke, Norb Sander, and others. His race-day face was intense and fierce as he ran with elbows out, pushed the pace from the start, and held on grittily to the finish, leaving it all out there whether the venue was a local all-comers meet or a world-class event.
“Like Corbitt, Art incorporated running into his daily commute. He never owned a car; in the mornings he ran 3 miles from his home to the Staten Island Ferry, then ran from South Ferry in Manhattan to Midtown, where he worked as a dental technician. After work, he repeated the journey in reverse for a total of 15-20 miles a day.”
“Giving back” was another big part of Hall’s mantra.
He mentored many a youngster in his days with the North Shore Track Club.
Art Hall 4th presents the awards to Tony Gulotta ( L) & Jeff Benjamin (R) – Pic courtesy of Xcellence Photos
And, working with the immortal Fred Lebow as a member of NYRR’s Board of Directors, he played a key role in the establishment of the NYRR’s celebrated Urban Running Program. Through its program of free clinics staged in all the boroughs, URP went on to guide many thousands of Big City youngsters into lives of fitness-through-running.
Over the years, Staten Island has never lagged as a “running destination.”
Its earliest celebrity of the running game – and many believe the borough’s greatest to this very day – was Abel Kiviat, the famed Curtis High School graduate who went on to stardom with the Irish-American Athletic Club, and took the silver medal in the 1500-meter run at the 1912 Stockholm Olympic Games, in a world record-breaking, National Track and Field Hall of Fame career.
In the 1920s and 30s, some old-timers remembered, several of the greats who earned honor, gold medals and an arrary of records for their home nation of Finland, actually lived and trained on Staten Island. Thanks to such celebrated coaches as Bill Welsh, George Kochman and many more, Staten Island’s high school teams both public and parochial, have been traditional powers in the sport.
Some latter-day Islanders – no, not the hockey team – have reached the heights of the sport. Marilyn King was an Olympic pentathlete, Bill Jankunis an Olympic high jumper, Charlie Marsala an NCAA and USA National Championship 1500-meter and two-time Olympic Trials racer. Rio 2016 Olympic 1500-meter semifinalist and 2017 USATF National 1500 champion Robby Andrews has long roots back to Staten Island, too..
Major road races have been throughout Staten Island over the years; Clove Lakes Park has always been a hub of the sport and the TCS NYC Marathon annually marshals its multitudes at the Fort Wadsworth military institution, before sending them on their 26.2-mile way over the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge and on through the other four boroughs to the finish line in Central Park.
And now there’s the gleaming just a few-years-old, mega-dollar, world-class Ocean Breeze Athletic Complex indoor facility that has quickly become a principal hub of the USA winter season.
So, it’s obvious that Staten Island – track and field-wise – has been and continuous to be a happening place.
Needless to say, a lot of people have made all of that history possible,
You may have seen them, heard of them – at events all over the island.
They’re the behind-the-scene folks, doing all that’s necessary to make excellent things happen. They’ve filled the roles of organizer, promoter, supporter, official, publicist, cheerleader, and much more.
In short, whatever it takes to get important things done.
When some Staten Islanders recently made the expert determination that such folks deserve the recognition they most certainly deserved, they took the proper step of invoking the name of Arthur Hall the Third.
Art Three had done so much over the years. So why not salute those who had similar things – and set up the framework to honor those who’d do likewise in the years to come?
And so the Art Hall Community Service Award was created and its first two recipients were saluted in a mid-December ceremony at the island’s Hilton Garden Hotel.
At The Art Hall Memorial Service Award Event!
L-R
Roseann Benjamin
Honoree Jeff Benjamin
Jack Benjamin
NY State Assemblyman Michael Cusick
Honoree Tony Gulotta
Kirsten Gulotta
Tommy Hart
Maxton & Trey Gulotta
Pic courtesy of Xcellence Photos
With members of the Hall family on hand and leading the presentations, applause rang out for Mr. Jeff Benjamin and Mr. Tony Gulotta.
Both had worked with Art Three on a variety of projects. Both recognized Hall’s talents as a “trailblazer” in a variety of directions, And both have worked years and years to
consolidate his legacy.
They’d even lobbied to get Art Hall Way created
It’s located at the southeast corner of Myrtle Avenue and Clove Road and forever memorializes a stretch of roadway the marathon star had traversed a zillion times, at the least.
When the awards were announced, Joe D’Amodio reported it this way on SIAdvance.com:
“In the spirit of giving back to this great community, it is an honor to recognize Jeff Benjamin and Tony Gulotta. These gentlemen are not only excellent runners, but they sacrifice so much to give back to our great borough. The Hall Family is proud to recognize Jeff Benjamin and Tony Gulotta as the inaugural recipients of the Art Hall Community Service Award. Jeff and Tony are men of integrity and selflessness in community service.”
“I am honored to receive this inaugural award with Jeff, a mentor as well as friend ,” said Gulotta, a Port Richmond HS alum and Mansfield (Pa.) University alumnus, , who ran for Art’s teams and the North Shore Track Club in the early 1980s. A further connection: At Mansfield, he ran with Ed Winrow, another of the great NYC Metro distance area running stadouts and Hall contemporary of the era.
“Gulotta is considered Art’s mentor and a friend,” stressed D’Amodio ” Art’s community focus was an inspiration to Tony, who over the years has made it a point to pass it on. His contributions to the Staten Island high school track and field community, Port Richmond HS, as well as economically disadvantaged residents of Staten Island through Michael McVey’s food pantry and computers-for-kids campaigns have truly made an impact to individuals in our community.”
Benjamin put it this way:
“I am just blown away…to be the recipient of this honor with my pal Tony truly makes our friendship and devotion to Art’s legacy come full circle. Without Art, I don’t think Tony and I would be where we are today.”
At Eugene’s The Wild Duck For Last Summer’s Olympic Trials, Jeff Benjamin, Larry Eder and Tony Gulotta, photo by Jeff Benjamin
D’Amodio added: “Benjamin joined Art’s North Shore Track Club in December of 1981 as a beginner runner and Tony was the high school athlete-captain. Benjamin, a College of Staten Island alumnus and retired teacher from New Dorp HS, is the board chair for the Staten Island Running Association. He’s also a board member of the Brighton Kiwanis Club and the Staten Island Advance’s monthly road running writer in the Staten Island on the Run column.”
As well as a frequent contributor to Mr. Larry Eder’s RunBlogRun website, covering the wide-wide world of track and field, the sport known to the rest of the planet as “athletics.”
The population of Staten Island is just under half a million. And let me now mix my sporting metaphors.
In the vernacular of boxing, it has far more than “punched its weight” in “athletics,” too.
