More than a year late with this and I so apologize. Not organized enough to be organized.

Note came many months ago from Hank Pfiefle.  

Recently, October 21, 2024, Maine running legend Kenny Flanders died and yesterday a number of us “from the day” showed up to pay our respects at his celebration of life. Included in the gathering were Joanie, Bick, Steve Podgajny and a bunch of others. Lots of war stories discussed. Many considered Kenny “The Babe Ruth of Maine Running” because he got things going with fast running in the mid ‘70’s with success at Deering High, then Northeastern U, and then on the roads.

Kenneth N. Flanders

PORTLAND – Kenneth N. Flanders, 72, peacefully passed away on Oct. 21, 2024, at Maine Medical Center in Portland, after a brief illness.

Kenny was born in Portland, on Dec. 31, 1951, a son of the late James and Evelyn Flanders. After graduating from Deering High School, 1970, where he was celebrated as a repeat state champion distance runner in track and cross country for three consecutive years, he completed a year of prep school at North Yarmouth Academy and then attended Northeastern University in Boston, Mass. where he majored in Physical Education on a full four-year track and cross country scholarship.

While attending Northeastern University, Kenny set many university records and was the 1973 New England Division One indoor track 2-mile New England champion in 8:50 and the outdoor track 6-mile New England champion in 28:45. Kenny also ran 13:48 for 3-miles on the track that season making him the first runner from Maine to ever break 14 minutes on the track at that time. While in college, Kenny raced in the 1973 Division One NCAA Cross Country Nationals in Spokane, Wash. against the legendary Steve Prefontaine. Kenny averaged 4:56-per-mile over the hilly 6-mile course placing 42nd behind “Pre” while beating many future Olympic runners in the process.

After finishing his collegiate career in 1975, Kenny returned to his home and favorite city, Portland, where he worked for Olympia Sport Center and later L.L.Bean for 30 years where he retired.

From 1975 to 1982, Kenny dominated the Maine road racing scene with countless wins and records. Many good and even great runners considered Kenny to be the standard for distance running excellence in Maine. Lots of runners in Maine would purposefully go to the Olympia Store in the Maine Mall where Kenny worked in management to be fitted to new running shoes by him and get his expert running advice. For a time in the late 1980s, Kenny had his own weekly newspaper column in the Maine Sunday Telegram where he offered running and training advice. In 1978, in perhaps his greatest race, Kenny led number one World Ranked runner Bill Rodgers for over 4-miles in the 7-mile Heartbreak Hill Road Race in Boston before finishing in second place. Kenny also was the proud seven-time winner of the annual Portland Boy’s Club 5 Mile Race where he routinely ran at or just under 24 minutes flat for five miles.

Kenny was inducted into the inaugural class of the Maine Running Hall of Fame with such running luminaries as 1984 Olympic Marathon Champion Joan Samuelson, 1988 10,000 meter Olympian Bruce Bickford, the legendary Ralph Thomas, and 1912 Olympic Marathoner Andrew Sockalexis. One running friend aptly described Kenny as “Maine’s Prefontaine.” Most runners in Maine from his era which coincided with the “Running Boom” would heartily agree with this assessment.

Despite his stellar running career, Kenny was so much more than a runner. If he was a national class athlete, he was most certainly a world class person and comedian. Kenny has been described by friends as the wittiest person who could have a room full of people laughing on the floor in seconds at any given moment. Kenny’s keen sense of wit and stories will be especially sorely missed at his favorite watering hole, Forest Gardens in Portland.

Kenny was the “favorite uncle” of his many nieces and nephews. Kenny inspired us to strive to be the best that we could be in sports and other endeavors. His family loves him and will miss him terribly as will so many of his friends … and Kenny loved his family and friends and spoke of them all often.

Kenny is survived by nephews Brian Flanders, Daniel Flanders, Bruce Turner, Jim Flanders, JJ Flanders, and nieces Catherine Alexander, Sharlene Bolia, Sherry Norton, Colleen Somma, Colleeta Higgins, Samantha Flanders, and Monica Henderson; and many grandnephews and grandnieces.

He was predeceased by his parents, Judson and Evelyn Flanders; and brothers Brian Flanders Sr., Marvin Flanders, and Darrell Flanders, and sisters Sylvia Lussier and Joyce Cook.

A celebration of Kenny’s life will be held at a later date and place to be announced in the coming weeks. Kenny’s final resting place will be in Blanchard Cemetery in Falmouth at the family gravesite with a gathering in the spring.

Tribute To Ken Flanders By Ed Rice

Since learning of this great Maine runner’s passing I’ve been thinking about that immortal poem AE Housman’s “To An Athlete Dying Young” and the fleeting nature of fame: “Smart lad, to slip betimes away/From fields where glory does not stay/And early though the laurel grows/It withers quicker than a rose.”

I know Kenny’s obituary is in today’s Portland Press Herald…I just hope (but I’m afraid I doubt this) that it is on…the Front Page. As a former newspaper editor, that’s exactly where I would put it, were I the Portland, Maine newspaper editor. Additionally, I wonder and, again, reluctantly doubt it happened, that the three Portland area TV stations carried this news. I believe they all should have.

Kenny was dominant…and he was a true great from my generation. The photo at top shows him winning the Portland Boys Club 5-mile race, held annually on Patriots Day. It was…easily…Maine’s earliest and longest-enduring annual road race, started originally in 1930!

Sadly, because neither the sponsoring Portland Boys and Girls Club nor the Maine Track Club cared about this history, the race was allowed to die. Now, its greatest all-time male victor is gone.

I hope Kenny’s greatness and his important legacy to Maine road running is NOT forgotten.

Maine Running Hall Of Fame

Ken Flanders
Winning the race that counts

After the finish of the Lewiston Recreation Department 3-Mile Race in May, 1970, race director Roland Dyer was wild with excitement over the amazing running of a rising star, young high school runner Kenny Flanders. Dyer could hardly be contained in his exuberance. In fact, it was Dyer who drove down to Portland to pick up Flanders that day to take him to the race because Flanders had no transportation. Then, after the race, Dyer drove him home again. But Dyer, who died a year later, would never see Flanders develop into the magnificent runner he would become.

Flanders went on to Northeastern University and, by 1973, he had been crowned New England collegiate champion in both the 2-mile and 6-mile. And through this decade he would race to seven victories in his favorite race, the Portland Boys Club Five Mile Race.

Flanders, 5-foot-11 and 148 pounds, was born in Portland and went to Deering High. As a ninth grader he had played basketball. In the spring of that year the track coach persuaded him to try running. They drove up to Lewiston to run in the 3-in-1-Day Road Race. It was 1967 and it was his first race. He ran in the 2-mile and won in 9:36, a record. While still in high school he won the Westbrook Rotary Patriots Day 2.25 Mile Race three straight years starting in 1968, setting a course record of 10:13.

Recruited by Coach Everett Baker of Northeastern, Flanders got a running scholarship and majored in physical education from 1971-76. According to Flanders, Everett was the kind of coach who knew how to bring the best potential out of any runner he coached. One of Flanders’s teammates was Mike Buckley. While Flanders was at Northeastern, Baker would continue to recruit many of Maine’s finest running talent, including Bruce Bickford, Steve Jaynes, Larry Greer, and Danny Paul.

In 1972, Flanders won the New England 6-Mile in 28:45, then went on to take 6th in the NCAAs, a race won by Steve Prefontaine. In 1973, at the New England Indoor Track and Field Championships, he ran a personal best 2-mile, winning in 8:50 while defeating talented Dan Moynahan of Tufts.

One of three best career races was a 7 miler he ran while attending Northeastern. With Bill Rodgers in the field, Flanders led for the first four miles before Rodgers came along to win it.

Flanders was never one to hang back and try to win the race at the end. He would challenge the best competition at any point in the race, even if there were 10 miles to go. His aggressive style of going out hard won him his share of big races. He won his first Portland Boys Club 5-Mile Race in 1970 and won it again in 1972. Then he won three straight, starting in 1979, for a total of seven victories. His best time was 24:04 in 1981.

His favorite race has always been the Boys Club race. “Whoever wins this race is the state champion for that year,” he said in January, 1979, at age 27.

Flanders best career times include: 1 mile, 4:12 in 1972; 3 miles, 13:55; 9 miles, 45:12; and 10 miles, 50:33. He was named Maine Runner of the Year in 1980, which many knowledgeable runners thought was somewhat belated. Yet when the Maine Running Hall of Fame was founded in 1988 and then had its first annual induction the following year, Flanders was among the first group inducted, along with Joan Benoit, Bruce Bickford, and Ralph Thomas.

His best racing distance was 10 miles, but his favorite race was 6 miles. During the late 1970s Flanders consistently ran weekly mileage of over 100 miles. One of his favorite workouts was a double, which included an 11-miler in the morning followed by a flat-out 10-mile “killer workout” later in the day. “When I walk into the Downeast Court Club after one of these workouts, my legs are wobbling,” he told Rick Krause in a 1979 interview.

“I like to run up front and control the race,” he said. Like Bob Hillgrove, he wasn’t afraid to run hard right from the gun, challenging the competition from the onset until the other contenders folded up and rolled off the side of the road. But as the years went by Flanders’ training methods changed somewhat. “It wasn’t geared to sprinting off the start. My strategy had gone back to being more experienced (rather) than being in better shape than the other runners,” he noted.

One person who knew and admired Flanders as much as anyone was Brian Gillespie of Portland. Early in Flanders’s running career, Gillespie would often take him to the races with him. “I have known Ken Flanders for 30 years,” said Gillespie. “He should go down in Maine running history as one of Maine’s top five distance runners. He had ability at all distances, from an 8:47 two-mile to a sub-30:00 10-K on the track.

“It seemed he never had a ‘bad’ race, the mark of a great performer.”