If Ed Kozloff calls, I'm letting the machine get it. I'm not answering.

Two calls came from Ed in July. The second one was about James Ramsey, one of those rare souls for whom the adjective "legend" is not hyperbole.

Jim had died of cancer at 96, a remarkably full life come to an end.

I first met Jim in the early 1980s, soon after I had started running, and writing about running. I had been a sportswriter who ran afoul of drugs and late nights in bars. I'd quit my job at the Detroit Free Press a couple years earlier, ostensibly to get over a divorce but also because a full- time job writing for a daily newspaper is an uphill grind and I was careening out of control, going downhill fast.

In 1981 I started running: not because I wanted to run, but because I figured training for a marathon was about the only way to show my former bosses I'd straightened myself out. Writing about running - I sold the Free Press a series on first-time runners struggling to get ready for that fall's marathon - gave me my first bylines since I walked away from the Red Wing gig in 1979.

The Freep then gave me assignments for the special section it published that year on the marathon, including a story about Michigan Runner magazine, which led to this gig. Editor Mike Duff liked what I'd written and invited me aboard.

In 1982 or 1983, I did my first profile of Jim Ramsey, then in his early 70s and taking aim at breaking 4:20 in the marathon.

We saw each other at races over the years. After he stopped running marathons, he continued to run. After he stopped running, he continued to enter events as a walker. In 1998, I got word Ramsey's beloved wife and constant companion on racing road trips, Julia, had died and that he was thinking of running one last marathon, just a few days before his 91st birthday, in her honor.

I called Jim and went over to his house. Thought it might make a nice article for my sometimes-weekly running column in the Detroit News, where I was now peddling my stuff. Jim, sharp as ever, wittily self- deprecating, told me he had in fact begun running again, and wanted to do the marathon, but that the marathon officials had told him there was a cutoff he'd have to meet.

The cutoff was something like six hours, and there was no way he was going to be able to make it, he said, so he would probably enter the 5K, instead.

I was incredulous. I told Jim I'd call the marathon officials and get this straightened out. Surely there was some mistake. Surely he'd be welcomed to participate.

This was before Doug Kurtis led a resurgence of the marathon. A sports-management company out of Cleveland, that doesn't deserve to have its name spelled out properly, was running the Freep marathon and knew nothing about the sport or its local legends.

They knew nothing about PR, either. They didn't see the publicity value of a 90-year-old African American from Detroit running a marathon in honor of his dead wife of 69 years. They told me they had a cutoff and they had it for a reason and that you couldn't very well expect them to have a cutoff and not enforce it.

I then made two phone calls. I called Nancy Hanus, the talented feature editor of the News, and told her about Jim Ramsey. His story was so compelling it demanded front-page treatment in the feature section, I told her, and she agreed.

A News photographer shot Jim running on Belle Isle at daybreak, getting lovely, dramatic photos worthy of a front page. I gave Hanus one of the longest stories she ever ran, and she figured out a way to get most of it into the paper.

This was his story: A good, hard-working black man in Detroit owns an auto-repair shop and works long hours for many years to raise his six kids right. Getting them all into college, he retires and settles back for the good life. And a sedentary life that leads to a mild heart attack at age 68 in 1977. His doctor tells him he can either sit on his couch and feel sorry for himself and probably die in another six months of a heart attack, or he can get off his butt and get some exercise and fight back.

As soon as he was able, Jim walked up to the Central High School track down the street from his house. He walked and ran one lap and thought he was going to die. "Track," he said, "you got me today. But I'm going to keep coming back until I beat you."

And he kept coming back. Day by day he got stronger. One day he ran 32 laps - eight miles -- felt strong at the finish, leaned over said, "Track, you're mine. I beat you today."

In 1980, Jim and Julia were on vacation in Daytona Beach and he heard about a race on the beach. On a whim, he entered it, had a blast and was hooked. The next year, at 73, he ran his first marathon.

It was my first marathon, too, the one I'd been writing about for the Free Press. The race drew more than 4,000 that year, still by far the largest in its history. That was before the era of charity fund-raisers and the influx of five-, six- and seven-hour marathoners. Jim's time of 4:43:15 beat out 329 younger runners.

A marathoner was born. Soon, Jim had run in Boston, Columbus, Cleveland, Maryland, Pittsburgh and Wisconsin. When he and Julia weren't out of state, they were driving to one race or another around Michigan in their van: he to run, she to cheer him for him and the many friends they had made.

Over the years, Ramsey was named "Athlete of the Year" by Running Times magazine, and set several national age-group records at 10 miles and 25K.

In 1994, Jim retired from marathoning, but he still showed up at many Detroit Striders races. Julia's declining health kept them close to home.

But running was hardly the start and end of Jim's tale. There were the kids, all professionals, all college educated. There was his civil-rights activism. He had marched in numerous fund-raisers for the NAACP, and for 10 years a 10K in his honor had raised money for the Museum of African American History in Detroit.

Losing Julia left a wound that Jim couldn't mend, but he could attend to it the way runners know best, by running. By picking up the miles. By taking on one more marathon.

Hanus ran the story in Saturday's combined edition of the Free Press and the Detroit News. The News has the features section in the Saturday paper, so being able to beat the Free Press at its own event by profiling someone who was sure to be the star of the upcoming race gave her, and me, a lot of satisfaction.

The other call I made was to Ed Kozloff, president of the Motor City Striders. He was in charge of scoring the race then, and it was his club's clock that would sit at the finish line. Marathon officials could say whatever they wanted to say, but it was Ed's clock, and Ed told me that as long as Jim Ramsey was on that course, that clock was going to stay on, people would be there to greet him, and he'd be given a finishing time.

Ramsey planned to run and walk the marathon. It was rainy and windy, just miserable. A couple miles into the race, near the end of the pack, he came across a woman, Beverly Knight, who was already slowing down. It was her first marathon, she was undertrained, and she was already despairing of being able to finish.

Ramsey took her under his wing. He gave her advice and kind words. He kept her moving briskly, deciding he'd no longer run, but would walk the rest of the way with her. On and on they walked, through the wind and the rain. Up on the sidewalks when the streets were reopened to traffic.

They finished in 7:52:46. They finished last, but they finished. Waiting for Jim was every TV station in town and some of the radio stations, too. As well as two of his daughters who joined him that day running in honor of Julia: Brenda Njiwaji, who finished in 5:42; and Jeanette Browner, who finished in 6:24.

"It was terrible, the wind and the rain," he told the media. "This was for my wife. She was with me all the way. Otherwise, I wouldn't have finished."

Said Knight: "He'd tell me we need to slow down, we're not going to win anything, we're just going to finish. I never thought I'd run so slow, but running with him made it perfect."

Jim was a hero that day - well, a bigger hero than usual. His effort was the most-publicized thing in the history of the Detroit marathon. Front page news in print. Trumpeted on the airwaves. Runner's World even wanted something.

After the race, I sent lengthy e-mails to the Free Press publisher, telling him that if the idiots who ran his race didn't know enough to know that letting Jim Ramsey run the race was good PR - if a marketing company actually wanted to DISQUALIFY him - then clearly it was a marketing company in name only and in desperate need of getting their butts booted back to Cleveland.

I don't know if my e-mails had any effect, but it wasn't long until Doug Kurtis was named, to much acclaim and with good results, as the new marathon director.

Jim, we'll miss you. But we won't grieve you. Your life was too special to feel bad about. We should all be so lucky.

~~~

The first call I got from Ed in July was to break the news to me first, as he'd promised a year or so ago, that he was retiring as president of the Motor City Striders. Worse, the Motor City Striders, he said, beginning in 2005, would no longer be putting on road races.

The club held its first race on Belle Isle on July 11, 1959 - a five-miler won by Jerry Bocci, a Grosse Pointer now in his 60s who continues to race-walk marathons around the U.S. He and his wife, Jeanne, met at a Motor City Strider race on Belle Isle, and their New Year's Eve run on the island has become one of the best-loved races in the state.

The Motor City Striders' last race will be on Saturday, Dec. 4, when it hosts the 17th annual Jingle Bell Run for Arthritis 5K in downtown Birmingham.

"This is something the family has talked about for the last few years," said Kozloff, a Huntington Woods resident whose wife, Sue, helped him put on races since he became club president in 1975. Their children - Ron, 32, a police officer in Garden City; Ken, 29, a Ph.D. student in biomedical engineering at the University of Michigan; and Diana, 25, a Detroit school teacher - all grew up helping put on and running in Motor City Strider races.

Kozloff said none of the other club officials - nor the dozen or so faithful volunteers who show up at each race to set out traffic cones, pass out race numbers, t-shirts and food, and serve as marshals at intersections - wanted to step in as chief race organizer.

"The time has come," he said. "It's better to step back while the club is still reasonably well thought of and a success, rather than let it die a slow death.

"It's not a relief. I hate to put all this aside. But at my age I knew there'd come a time. Instead of having a heart attack and having it dictated to me, I'd rather go out this way," said Kozloff, who will turn 62 on New Year's Eve.

In its heyday in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the club put on more than 30 races a year and had a membership of about 1,200, ranking it in the top five largest clubs in the Road Race Clubs of America, a national organization of regional running clubs.

The first heyday - maybe another is coming - of the Free Press marathon was 1981. It was my first race ever, and my first Motor City Strider event. I no longer run anywhere near the 75 races or so I did every year for much of the 1980s and 1990s, and haven't run enough Strider races in recent years, but - damn! - having no more of them?

So many fond memories - the mid-week series in Huntington Woods, usually so hot and with such a fast field; the cross-country race in Dearborn each November; the Grand Prix series held on the actual auto-race course, first downtown and then on Belle Isle; the Big Boy races at the Silverdome; all the Races for the Cure; the Max and Erma races at Oakland University and then in Birmingham; all the massive Turkey Trots downtown; the one and only Run the Reuther just before that freeway was opened to car traffic ...

And so forth. "Every Race an Adventure" was the club's motto, and even if they weren't all adventures, you could count on everything being done right. Starting on time, quick results, good food at the finish, a reasonable cost.

This year, the club will put on 17 races and has a membership of 500. In the 1970s, Kozloff said the entire year's worth of races would draw about 1,500 entrants. In 2000, the last year he added the figures, total entrants were more than 50,000.

Kozloff, who has taught in the Warren Consolidated school district for 35 years, said the club will continue to support its adult and youth track club, which total about 60 members, and to support its women's racing team.

The club founded the Motor City Marathon on Belle Isle in 1963, which picked up the sponsorship of the Detroit Free Press in 1978, at the beginning of the era of marathons being held on big-city streets.

Its largest event has been the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure 5K, which has drawn as many as 30,000. That race will continue, but won't be affiliated with the Motor City Striders.

Sadly, I missed the last Motor City Striders' mid-week series this year in Huntington Woods, their 42nd annual. I have a nine-year-old grandson now, and his baseball games were on Thursdays. I didn't mind missing the runs, too much. There was always next year, I figured.

Oh, well, there is still THIS year. The club's next race will be on Sept. 12, the Trot for Tots 5K in Royal Oak. The other races on this year's schedule include the Run Wild at the Zoo 5K in Royal Oak on Sept. 26, the 17th annual Peruski Memorial 4-mile cross-country run in Dearborn on Oct. 31, and the 22nd annual Turkey Trot in downtown Detroit on Nov. 25.

For information on those races, call (248) 544-9099, or go to www.motorcitystriders.com. MR