Lamar Perlis stood no chance. Coach Palmer paired him with Jack Bush for the pit drill, where two football players explode toward each other until someone loses ground.
Bush, a human mammoth, would go on to letter as a lineman at Georgia.
Perlis, a scrawny kid wearing pads half his size, would letter in Georgia Tech band and glee club.
No backing out, though. Perlis grabbed the turf and knelt shoulder to shoulder with Bush.
Palmer blew his whistle, and whack!
A collision. Their cleats clawed for a stronger grip in the Cordele dirt, and then something unexpected happened.
A draw.
“Here was me completely outsized,” Perlis recently said. “But I held.”
After practice Perlis, 15, rushed home from Cordele High to brag about his heroic stalemate. He flung open the door, threw his pads to his dad and proclaimed he was going to play football.
His dad looked at the pads, then at his 5-foot-4, 130-pound son.
“Give them back,” he said. “You’re not playing.”
That was 1939. Perlis, 90 and still 5-foot-4, laughed at the whole episode now.
“It broke my heart,” he said with a warm chuckle.
Football pads didn’t suit him. But running shoes did — and they still do.
Four days ago, Perlis finished his 23rd Atlanta Journal-Constitution Peachtree Road Race, this time as the oldest male entrant.
“(There’s an) incentive for the older people to keep running,” Perlis said. “All you’ve got to think about is to outrun the street sweeper.”
Perlis started running regularly in his 60s during a small-company management course at Harvard. He’d dash to the track between classes and jog three miles a day.
He still jogs every day, and his work ethic mirrors that non-stop running. Today he manages small-town properties in Cordele, such as shopping centers and rental homes.
“I think you would classify me as an absolute entrepreneur,” Perlis said. “There’s always an opportunity out there.”
Biographers in need of a subject would love the Peachtree veteran, whose life is a novel that needs to be written. The 2015 Peachtree is its latest chapter.
“He’s really an inspiration,” Perlis’ friend, Jay Zandman, said. “Every time I talk to him or think about him, he’s just an inspiration.”
Chapter 3: The Kid Professor — he took courses in aeronautical engineering at Tech when he was 16, and shortly after served during World War II by teaching aircraft-maintenance classes at Yale.
Chapter 12: Truckers’ Advocate — he created the first modern truck stop in 1971, revolutionizing the trucking industry. He was inducted into the National Association of Truck Stop Operators Hall of Fame in 2011.
Chapter 20: Soulmate — he drinks more orange juice than alcohol and has never tasted a cigarette, but he said his wife, Jackie, is the reason for his lasting health and happiness.
“(She’s the) best thing that God ever did for a man,” he said. “She does everything. She’s my soulmate.”
He hopes to add another chapter next year: The 2016 Peachtree.
“I would look forward to it,” he said.
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