Statue honors first woman to run the Boston marathon

Published 3:00 pm Saturday, October 9, 2021

Fifty-five years ago Bobbi Gibb sprinted into the 1966 Boston Marathon field of male runners, trying to hide herself under her brother’s blue-hooded sweatshirt. With that one act, the 23-year-old would become the first woman to run the Boston Marathon.

In her quiet way, she had hoped to break stereotypes of her day when women were told they could not serve in Congress, run a major company and were turned away from medical school — Gibb’s dream, which was broken when she was told during an entrance interview that she would distract the male students.

That moment of her long-distance running triumph is now memorialized in a 5-foot, 5-inch bronze statue of Gibb, created by Gibb, now an accomplished artist. The sculpture was unveiled at a ceremony on Tuesday evening.

The event was the first time Gibb saw the finished statue from the foundry. At a later date, it will be installed at a prominent outdoor location on the corner of Main Street and Hayden Rowe in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, which used to be the starting point of the celebrated marathon.

“The exciting part is that it is midway between the point where Bobbi actually started her race and the current Boston Marathon starting line. That corner is going to become a major focal point and it’s on a rise that overlooks the starting line. Every runner in the future who runs the Boston Marathon will have to pass by her sculpture,” said Tim Kilduff, president of the nonprofit 26.2 Foundation.

Furthermore, he noted that it is in a historic district. The Hopkinton Historic District Commission, which was enthusiastic about the plan, gave the project and the sculpture’s installation its unanimous approval.

“To me, the most exciting part is that this captures a moment, and not only does it capture a historic moment in marathon history but it’s done by the artist who created the moment,” said Kilduff. “There is no other statue like this.”

Making a statement

In 1966, Gibb wanted to make a social statement using her athletic talent, and in 2021, she is making a statement with her artistic talent.

At the time of her ground-breaking run, she was newly married, living in California and running more than 40 miles at the time. But she received a rejection letter in response to her application to run the historic marathon, being told that women were physiologically unable to run such a distance.

Gibb, a shy, slender woman, took a bus from the West Coast, to show them otherwise. She donned her brother’s Bermuda shorts, a tank-top bathing suit and a new pair of boy’s running shoes, and snuck into the race before the starting point, and finished, with bleeding blisters, ahead of nearly two-thirds of the men with a time of about three hours and 21 minutes.

At the Hopkinton unveiling Tuesday, Gibb was in the company of other marathon champions such as Bill Rodgers, Sara Mae Berman, Amby Burfoot and Jack Fultz.

During the ceremony, Kilduff said it was time to celebrate women, art and distance running.

“We believe it is long past time to recognize the Boston Marathon’s great women runners,” he said. “The fact that Boston’s first woman runner is also an artist makes this unveiling absolutely unique and appropriate.”

For many decades, Gibb had hoped that a life-sized statue of a female runner would have its place on the Boston Marathon course where there were already statues of male runners.

“My hope when I began working on the sculpture was to create something that captures the power of the human spirit as well as provides inspiration for all who look to take on the challenge of running 26.2 miles from Hopkinton to Boston,” Gibb said.

Even at the age of 78, she will still go out and run for an hour.

“I don’t feel any different,” said Gibb. “I just love to run, and I’m still writing books, still making art, and still doing research in neurodegenerative diseases and aging.”

Gibb, the artist

Several years ago, Kilduff visited Gibb’s studio where he saw her sculpture work, and this statue idea began to germinate.

“They wanted that classic pose of me at the finish in Bermuda shorts and a tank-top bathing suit, although I had was thinking about a more generic idea of a female runner,” said Gibb, who also paints.

In 2019 she finished the life-size clay model at her studio, after which she brought it to Buccacio Sculpture Services foundry in Canton, Massachusetts.

“I’m really excited about this and I want to thank Tim (Kilduff) and everyone who supported this project. Tim conceived of the idea many years ago and now it has come to fruition,” said Gibb.

Jacqueline Ganim-DeFalco, an art marketing advisor and a member of the sculpture project team, worked closely with Gibb in support of this effort.

“Hearing her tell her story to women of all ages reinforced the importance of preserving this important historic moment as truly no one can believe how much has changed since Bobbi jumped out of the bushes in 1966,” Ganim-DeFalco said. “It’s been an honor to be part of something so important and at the same time, help Bobbi share her art with the world.”

For Gibb, her greatest motive was to break down barriers in that pioneering Boston run that made headlines around the globe.

“I figured once they knew a women could run these kinds of distances, it was going to throw into question all the other misconceptions about women and how they couldn’t get into certain professions, and I had been fuming about this for most of my adolescence. At that time, I was faced again with ‘you can’t do this because you are a woman’ and that’s the tragedy of prejudice because if you are not allowed to do it, how can you prove that you can do it,” she said recalling her 1966 run.

“We think in stereotypes,” she continued. “We put ourselves into stereotypes and we put other people into stereotypes and it takes a lot to overcome them.”

Gibb looks forward to Monday’s Boston Marathon in a few days for many reasons.

“I’m shy but I love people. I’m a funny mixture because I’m kind of a recluse. I write and I sculpt and none of these are gregarious activities but I really love people,” said Gibb. “When I go to the marathon every year, I think ‘these people are like my family.’ I meet wonderful people and it’s a kind of high reconnecting with people from all over the world.”

For more details, visit www.26-2.org or bobbigibbart.net.

Gail McCarthy can be reached at 978-675-2706, or at gmccarthy@gloucestertimes.com