An inspirational runner is named Roanoke’s top Citizen for 2019.
Early during his Army career, Marion Childress began to run, not so much because he wanted to, but because he was required to. All these years later, he is closing in on his goal of running 1,000 races (he had 956 in late November, 2019) and he’s looking forward to spending his retirement weekends helping Irene, his wife of nearly half a century, sell her fabric artwork.
Childress’s running has been of more benefit than to his own health. Over the years he formed C&C Runners and C&C Walkers, which has a large membership, bringing in people who want to run or walk for health—and sometimes competition, though the latter is not a specific goal of the 67-year-old.
“I do it for fun,” he insists.
His dedication to running and the people who join him on a regular basis led to his being named the City of Roanoke’s 2019 Citizen of the Year.
Childress, a 1971 graduate of Lucy Addison High School, served in the U.S. Army for 23 years, and works at the United States Department of Veteran Affairs in Salem. His C&C Runners/C&C Walkers has grown to include more than 1,000 runners.
In 1973, he began his Army career by running “four or five times a week, three or four miles each time,” he says. “I started competing in 1983 and I remember taking Irene to my first race. I was so slow, she thought I’d gotten lost.”
Since then, he has run 52 half-marathons, 31 marathons and one ultra-marathon (31 miles or 50 kilometers). The benefit to him?
“Freedom,” he says without hesitation. “It takes my mind off all my troubles and lets me concentrate on my pace and what is around me. … It makes me reach inside and see if I can endure.” Which he does.
The camaraderie he learned in the military has rolled over to his running groups, he says: “It filters through as family.” When he retires in the near future, he says, he will spend time with his wife, “helping her set up [for her art sales]. I’ll do that full time. I’ve been running every [weekend] for a long time and my wife has sacrificed.”
He sticks mostly to local and regional races, venturing to D.C. or Richmond occasionally. “I’ve never desired to run the Boston or New York marathons,” he says.
Instead, he runs the Drumstick Dash; Spooky Sprint; Urban Challenge (WazUpwitdis); Blue Ridge Marathon (“That’s the hardest”); Richmond Marathon; and Christmas Eve Fun Run.
Childress successfully battled cancer that began in 2012, reaching remission in 2015. He was recognized by the 2015 Mizuno Power to Inspire Award and is the 2014 Unofficial Running Ambassador of the Roanoke Valley named by the Roanoker magazine.
“He is just an inspirational and upbeat guy,” says runner and long-time Roanoke Valley journalist Gene Marrano. “Even a bout with cancer didn’t deter him for long. Marion has encouraged so many people from all walks of life, shapes, sizes and ages to get out and run—or walk. Doesn’t matter at what pace. And he draws people to him like a magnet.”
About the Writer:
Dan Smith is an award-winning Roanoke-based writer/author/photographer and a member of the Virginia Communications Hall of Fame (Class of 2010). His blog, fromtheeditr.com, is widely read and he has authored seven books, including the novel CLOG! He is founding editor of a Roanoke-based business magazine and a former Virginia Small Business Journalist of the Year (2005).
