While the idea of regifting is sometimes frowned upon, nobody seems to take issue with Tim Singleton for the gift he gives Atlanta every July Fourth: the Peachtree Road Race.
For more than four decades, at the height of summer and on the day the nation celebrates the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, Singleton’s gift, though the same, is ever changing.
“In the beginning it was like a family affair, all of us who showed up knew each other,” said Bill Thorn, who hasn’t missed a race since it began. “No one had anything in mind that it would become what it is.”
The race began in 1970, with 110 runners who finished the race, and it has steadily grown in popularity every year. This year, somewhere in the neighborhood of 60,000 people signed up for the 10-kilometer race, which has been called by many the world’s largest 10K.
“It caught the imagination of the city, and the city fell in love with it,” Julia Emmons, a former director of the Atlanta Track Club, said of the road race. “And Tim never lost his affection for the Peachtree.”
Timothy Moore Singleton of Dahlonega died Wednesday at Piedmont Hospital from complications of congestive heart failure. He was 76.
A memorial services has been planned for 11 a.m. Aug. 10 at St. Elizabeth Episcopal Church in Dahlonega. Interment will follow at Daves Creek Baptist Church in Dahlonega. Dahlonega Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.
Singleton, who grew up in Atlanta, wasn’t just interested in running; he was a full-blown athlete. As a child, he not only ran track, he played baseball, too. He was a multisport star at Druid Hills High School, and he went on to play football in the 1950s under legendary coach Bobby Dodd at Georgia Tech, where he also ran track.
The birth of the Peachtree Road Race came during the time when Singleton was the dean of men and cross country coach at Georgia State University. The race, which is now formally called The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Peachtree Road Race, wasn’t Singleton’s first race creation. In the late ’60s he was the chairman of the road race committee for the Atlanta Track Club. Each committee member would plot a course for club members to run on weekends.
“These were very informal little races,” Emmons said. “Maybe somebody would remember to bring water, maybe somebody would remember to bring orange slices, that kind of thing.”
But the Peachtree was Singleton’s race, his contribution to the track club’s road race committee, she said. It just happened to turn into something lasting.
Singleton, who earned a master’s degree from Tech and a doctorate from Georgia State, served as race director of the Peachtree until 1976, when he moved to Houston to teach business management. He returned to the Atlanta area in the late-’80s, when he became the Lee Anderson Professor of Management at what is now the University of North Georgia in Dahlonega. He retired in 2001.
In 2011, Singleton was inducted into the Atlanta Sports Hall of Fame, along with Mark Price, a two-time All-America guard at Georgia Tech who had an illustrious NBA career, and Jessie Tuggle, a five-time NFL Pro Bowl linebacker for the Falcons.
“That was a proud moment for him,” Emmons said. “That let him know that people hadn’t forgotten him.”
Singleton is survived by his second wife, Martha Singleton; two sons from his first marriage, Timothy Singleton Jr. of Huntsville, Ala., and Greg Singleton of Tampa, Fla.; and four grandchildren.
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