Sixty thousand people get up early on the Fourth of July to run/walk 6.2 miles down Peachtree, but they get handed a T-shirt for their trouble. What fascinates me is all those folks who get up early on the Fourth of July to witness someone else’s epic pursuit of a T-shirt. What’s in it for them?
I’ve witnessed enough Peachtree Road Races and quizzed enough watchers to know that tradition is a driving force. These folks keep getting up early on the Fourth because they get up early every Fourth. Many come to support family. Some come because they feel a patriotic tug on our nation’s birthday. Some come to drink beer. Many come to walk their dogs. Each has a reason for being on Peachtree Street. Here’s one man’s reason.
Marvin McCollum, who’s 78, lives in Stone Mountain. He arose at 6:30 Friday and traveled his usual route, taking a side street to the Peachtree Battle Promenade, where he always parks on the morning of July 4. He’ll takes the same side street back to Lindbergh when he has done what he’s come to do, which is to stand on the east side of Peachtree holding a large sign.
When the runners whose names grace the sign — John and Diane Heath, brother and sister — approach, they angle over toward McCollum, give him a hug, pose for a picture and continue on their journey, still with three miles to go. The Heaths are accomplished runners, so they start in one of the first groups and don’t take long to reach Peachtree Battle. Once the Heaths have gone, McCollum can drive home, collect his wife, Margie, and head for Lake Jackson.
Being 10 years retired from his job with a mechanical-contracting firm, McCollum doesn’t have to get out of bed for anything. Instead this lifelong Atlantan chooses to rise early every Fourth and drive into Buckhead to hold a sign saluting two friends. “My wife thinks I’m absolutely nuts,” McCollum said. But ask yourself this: Do you have such a friend?
John Heath, now an officer in the Atlanta Police Department’s bicycle unit, met McCollum at church decades ago and worked alongside him for a time at the mechanical contractor’s. There’s a 30-year age difference, but the two, McCollum said, “made a great connection.” The Heaths run the Peachtree every year — this was their 24th — and five or six years ago McCollum decided to surprise them with a sign.
“They were shocked,” he said. They loved it. He enjoyed doing it. Thus are traditions born.
Dr. Diane Heath is an internist who works at Georgia Tech. McCollum said she has one of his first signs in her garage. Both her Facebook page and McCollum’s feature photographic evidence of his previous sign-making, about which there’s an inviolable rule: No recycling. “My wife asked me this year, ‘Why don’t you just use last year’s sign?’ ” McCollum said. “Can’t do it.”
This year’s model involved a piece of cardboard cut from a box — “I just bought a refrigerator,” he said — some paper, some glue and “four or five hours” of work on the evening of July 3. The sign was red, white and blue, featured three attached stars and was roughly as wide as McCollum is tall. “Celebrate 24 P’Trees,” it read, and it bore the Heaths’ names plus a bit of subtext.
The middle featured a white patch with flecks of black. “I burned this,” McCollum said. “It’s supposed to represent how they’re smoking when they run by.”
McCollum ran the Peachtree once himself, but he hurt his Achilles tendon and his feet started bothering him and he gave up running. Both his son and his daughter have run the race, and he’s a bit surprised that none of his six grandchildren has taken up running. “They’re more cheerleaders,” he said, though it’d be hard to top Granddad as a motivational figure.
Every Fourth of July, the man takes his handmade sign and assumes his position. He does it because he’s a really nice man and a really good friend. And minutes after greeting the Heaths on July 4, 2014, Marvin McCollum was thinking of July 4, 2015.
“Next year will be their 25th Peachtree,” he said. “I’ll have to do something special.”
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