But his contribution to the race, begun in 1929 when he returned from his Scottish homeland to Philadelphia via a 29th place finish in the Marathon, to his liaison work with the foreign athletes in this year’s race, has been more selfless than has been anybody else’s in the 87 years the race had been in existence. Kelley‘s long association with the Marathon, now past the half-century mark, Jock Semple had slid somewhat into forgotten man status. In recent years, with the retirement of the other co-director Will Cloney in 1982, and the continuation of Johnny A. And Bobby Orr, a Semple favorite, was merely an ice skater. So I’m officially the liaison man between people askin’ a lot of questions and the BAA. “Of course, my number in the Boston Garden is known all over the United States as Capital 7-3214. In 1984, his marathon work still continued amidst the liniment, whirring diathermy machine, stacks of white towels without advertising on them, single shower stall, and that black telephone on his desk. It wasn’t just this race that people didn’t have back home, wherever that might have been, it was Jock. Since becoming the co-race director in 1950, Jock has been every marathoners living, breathing, barking representative of this New England sports institution. I visited his office in early April as the Marathon neared.
Just the month before he worked with the Scottish team as they competed in the IAAF World Cross Country Championships in New Jersey.
“Well, I’ve been a willing workhorse, so it’s OK,” said Jock of 80 years in 1984, a step slower if no less zeroed in on the task at hand. Jock Semple’s Salon de Rubdown had been upstairs, past the gauntlet of the North Station bottle-in-bag regulars, and down the hall from the offices of the Boston Celtics for more years than most can recall, and to more thousands than chose to remember, where the workhorse of the Boston Marathon was stabled. Yet to say his office was the heart of the Boston Marathon would not be to overstate its importance. To say his office was tucked away in the labyrinth of the old Boston Garden is to understate the quest to find it. Jock in his Salon de Rubdown in the old Boston Garden
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