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Inducted June 20, 2024

A long distance runner, Meyer was a four time All-American in Cross Country and Track and Field at the University of Michigan (1973-1977).  He won the 1978 U.S. National Cross Country Championship, the 1980 Detroit Marathon, and the 1982 Chicago Marathon.  Meyer would set 10 American records and two World records in his running career.  In 1983, he won the Boston Marathon with a winning time of 2:09:00 and was the last American to win the race until 2014. Meyer was named United States Male Distance Runner of the Year in 1983 and was the first person ever to run a sub 4 minute mile and a sub 2:10 marathon.  Meyer has been inducted into several Halls of Fame including the National Distance Running Hall of Fame, the University Of Michigan Hall Of Honor, and the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame.

INDUCTION BANQUET PROGRAM STORY — June 20, 2024

Greg Meyer: You Don’t Want to Let Your Community Down

By Steve Grinczel
Sportswriter (retired)
The Grand Rapids Press, Booth Newspapers of Michigan, MLive Media Group

The names of so many of the people Greg Meyer grew up around in a working-class neighborhood on Grand Rapids’ lower West Side were dead giveaways. You were either a Van Whosit with Dutch heritage or a Whatstheirnameski of Polish descent. The two predominant clans coexisted in relative harmony during the 1960s and ’70s despite stereotypical differences – the Hollanders were stoic, frugal and prayerful while the Polacks were known for their exuberance, toughness and passion. It seemed like every other block in Meyer’s neighborhood and surrounding area had a Dutch church or a Polish meat market known for its particular style of kielbasa.

That said, Meyer was by no means an outlier despite his ancestrally ambiguous name. His father, Jay, was in fact Dutch and Christian Reformed while his mother, the former Rita Zieziul, was Polish-Catholic. Considering Greg, and his year-older brother Matt, attended nearby St. Adalbert’s Elementary School, where the student body for grades 1-8 registered at 90-plus-percent Polish-American, his cultural identity was never in doubt.

“I always told people, I’m the best and worst of Grand Rapids, depending on your point of view,” said Meyer, the executive vice president and chief community officer for University of Michigan Health-West. “But when you’d say we’re proud to be West Siders that meant Polish, no disrespect to the Dutch.”

Meyer’s Polish pride is central to a world-class distance running career that: began as a member of the St. Adalbert’s rag-tag track and field team; produced city and state cross-country and track championships for Grand Rapids West Catholic High School; feted him as a four-time All-American at the University of Michigan; saw him run a sub-four-minute mile; included 10 American and two world records; featured internationally prominent marathon victories in Detroit (’80), Chicago (’82) and Boston (’83); and is validated once again by his induction into the National Polish American Sports Hall of Fame.

Off the track or road course, Meyer joined forces with Bill Rodgers, Herb Lindsay, John Sinclair, Benji Durden and other prominent male and female runners in the early ’80s to help revolutionize an overlooked sport celebrated nationally just once every four years at the Olympics. Meyer & Co. opened the door for prize money to flow into an elitist enterprise that was stuck on preserving “the purity” of amateur athletes. As a result, Meyer and his compatriots are to professionalizing amateur sports what Curt Flood was to free agency in Major League Baseball.

“Where that got broken was at the Bobby Crim road race,” said Meyer, referring to the 10-mile event in Flint, Mich. named for the former speaker of the Michigan House of Representatives. “The minute they allowed us to run meant all 5,000 people in that race became professionals and technically, wherever they went on to run would contaminate everybody. So they threw the contamination rule out soon after that, and that’s how you ended up with Magic Johnson in the Olympics. People don’t realize the change we brought to sports.”

Of course, Meyer doesn’t even get to that point without inheriting his parents’ blue-collar work ethic, and the coaches and mentors who were pivotal in his development as an athlete, competitor and person. First and foremost was Ed Flak, the St. Adalbert’s youth football and track and field czar who instilled toughness and teamwork into his young charges. The slightly built Meyer wasn’t such a good fit for his first love, football, but track wasn’t much more welcoming back then. Because the longest running event available covered only 220 yards and sprinting wasn’t his forte, Meyer gravitated to the pole vault, nearly clearing 10 feet as an eighth-grader.

That didn’t stop St. Adalbert’s track coach Bernie Prawdzik, a demanding taskmaster who transcended being bound to a wheelchair, from nurturing Meyer’s innate ability to endure the pain, fatigue and monotony inherent to running long distances.

The St. Adalbert’s track team practiced and competed in Catholic school league meets at Ninth Street Field, about a mile from Meyer’s home. A 352-yard loose cinder track surrounded a football field tucked into a vacant corner of the American Seating Co. factory complex, where world-renowned stadium and theater seating, and the ubiquitous metal folding chair, was produced.

One of the ways Prawdzik meted out discipline during practice was to make the athletes run laps around the truncated track. While most of his teammates were left gasping for air, Meyer was unfazed and, with nothing better to do, often kept running.

“You look at moments, you know?” Meyer recalled. “And that moment was when Bernie Prawdzik, who was also an assistant football coach for us, just wanted to get me out of his hair because I had just broken my thumb. So he said, ‘Go run two miles and I’ll time you.’ I still remember when I got done (in just over 12 minutes) he said, ‘You know, when you get to high school next year there’s a sport for idiots like you – it’s called cross-country.’ ”

Success didn’t come quickly for Meyer at West Catholic, however. Once he learned he couldn’t compete with the varsity cross-country team as a freshman he turned in his running togs for one more ill-fated attempt to play football. Meyer’s development as a runner resumed in the spring under West Catholic track coach Bob Misner, who in a Grand Rapids Press article following Meyer’s Boston Marathon victory said, “He’s always had the edge ever since I can remember first seeing him as a skinny, bird-legged ninth-grader.”

Meyer rejoined the Falcons on the trails as a sophomore, honing his skills and competitive instincts under the tutelage of hard-driving West Catholic cross-country coach Len Skrycki. “I really can’t take any credit for his development through high school,” Skrycki told The Press. “I’m just tickled pink I didn’t screw him up.” Prawdzik also continued to mentor Meyer, who finished fifth in the state championship cross-country meet as a sophomore.

“Bernie said to me, ‘You may lose on and off this spring (in track), but starting next year you shouldn’t lose anymore,” Meyer said. “That’s when it dawned on me that people thought about me like that because I never thought that way myself. I was motivated by fear. There are very few athletes I ever met that have this pure confidence that they just think they are better than everybody else. Most are always trying to prove they should be there, and that was me.”

As Meyer’s stellar high school career came to a close, he was recruited by Michigan, Michigan State, Notre Dame, Southern Methodist, Western Michigan and Central Michigan among others.

Wolverine track coach Ron Warhurst was pivotal in Meyer’s transition from being a great athlete to becoming an elite one.

“The reason I continued running after college is Ron Warhurst,” said Meyer, who won the Big Ten 3,000-meter steeplechase title as a freshman. “Sometimes people have a belief in you that’s stronger than your own and that was Ron. I remember him telling me when I graduated, ‘I think you should hang around for a while; I think you’re only scratching the surface.’ And I had to explain to my mom why I wasn’t going to take a teaching job and was going to stay in Ann Arbor to run and work as a janitor for (legendary Michigan football coach) Bo Schembechler.”

By the time Meyer left Michigan, his physique had filled out to the point where he looked more like a muscular halfback in running shorts than the typically emaciated distance runner. His style was predicated on demoralizing the competition with superior fitness and uncommon power. He moved to Boston where he trained with Rodgers and worked in the four-time Boston Marathon champion’s running-gear store.

Despite lacking a household name, Polish or otherwise, Meyer went into the ’83 Boston Marathon as the heavy favorite based on the world record he set three weeks earlier at Cherry Blossom 10-miler in Washington, D.C. While the world record was broken a few years later, Meyer’s American record held for 40 years.

Meyer posted a winning time of 2:09:00, the second best ever recorded at Boston, while prevailing over the then-fastest field in race history. The 1983 U.S. Male Distance Runner of the Year would stand as “the last American man to win Boston” for 30 years until Mebrahtom “Meb” Keflezighi, a naturalized citizen, prevailed in 2014. Boston is still waiting for its next American-born male winner.

While Boston reigns as Meyer’s crowning achievement, he has grown over time to hold it in no higher esteem than other milestones, such as breaking four minutes in the mile and the seven victories he recorded in what started out as the Old Kent River Bank Run, a 15-mile road race that’s been held in Grand Rapids every spring since he won the inaugural event in 1978.

“A lot of things are kind of equal,” said Meyer, who retired from competitive running in 1992. “When people make a big deal out of me winning the Boston Marathon, I think that’s nice but it’s not the only thing that makes me smile about how lucky I was with my running career. The River Bank wasn’t this world-renowned race but it was important to me because it was home and you protect your home turf.

“It all goes back to the West Side. You don’t want to let your community down.”