Ellison Brown

Ellison Myers Brown Sr (September 22, 1914^[1] – August 23, 1975^[2]), widely known as Tarzan Brown, and Deerfoot amongst his people, was a two-time winner of the Boston Marathon in 1936 (2:33:40) and 1939 (2:28:51). A member and direct descendant of the last acknowledged royal family of the Narragansett Indian tribe of Rhode Island, he also participated in the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. He was scheduled to participate in the 1940 Summer Olympics in Helsinki, but these were canceled due to the outbreak of World War II. Tarzan Brown is still one of only two Native Americans to have won the Boston Marathon (the other was Thomas Longboat of the Onondaga Nation from Canada, in 1907) and the only Native American to have more than one victory in Boston. He was inducted into the American Indian Athletic Hall of Fame in 1973.

Brown set the American men's record for the marathon at the 1939 Boston Marathon (2:28:51) and at a 1940 marathon in Salisbury Beach, Massachusetts (2:27:30).^[3]

Biography

Ellison Myers Brown, aka Tarzan, was born to parents of Narragansett Indian descent, Byron and Grace (Babcock) Brown, and raised in poverty on and around the Narragansett Indian reservation in Charlestown, Rhode Island and the neighboring town of Westerly, Rhode Island with his brothers Franklin, Clifford and Elwin and his sisters Myra, Alice aka "Nina" and Grace. Tarzan Brown first caught notoriety for running when he was merely 12 years old, as he ran and followed fellow Native American runner, Horatio Stanton, as Stanton was training for an upcoming race. Thomas "Tip" Salimeno, Stanton's trainer, took young Ellison under his wing when Ellison reached the age of 16 and the first steps to an illustrious career in marathon running was underway. A career that saw Ellison "Tarzan" Brown eventually win the Boston Marathon in 1936 and 1939 and become a member of the 1936 U.S. Olympic team.^[4]

Heartbreak Hill & 1936 Boston Marathon victory

Heartbreak Hill is an ascent over 0.4-mile (600 m) between the 20 and 21-mile (32 and 34 km) marks, near Boston College. It is the last of four "Newton hills", which begin at the 16-mile (26 km) mark and challenge contestants with late (if modest) climbs after the course's general downhill trend to that point. Though Heartbreak Hill itself rises only 88 feet (27 m) vertically (from an elevation of 148 to 236 feet (45 to 72 m)),^[5] it comes in the portion of a marathon distance where muscle glycogen stores are most likely to be depleted—a phenomenon referred to by marathoners as "hitting the wall."

"Tarzan" Brown had taken off so fast at the start of the 1936 Boston Marathon that the press followed the second runner, John A. Kelley, until the 20-mile mark, and it was on this hill that Kelley caught up to Tarzan. As Kelley overtook Tarzan—an amazing feat given the steady record breaking pace Tarzan had set—Kelley patted Tarzan on the back. What followed was a struggle between Tarzan, who took the lead on the downhills, and Kelley, who took the lead on the uphills, until finally Tarzan took the lead again to win the race. This struggle inspired reporter Jerry Nason to name the last Newton hill "Heartbreak Hill" because Tarzan "broke Kelley's heart" there.^[4]

1936 Olympic Games in Hitler's Germany

Brown was selected to compete on the U.S. Olympic team for the 1936 Olympic Games in Nazi Germany and was a teammate of the legendary track and field star, Jesse Owens. There are varied stories of what exactly occurred while Brown was in Hitler's Germany for the 1936 Olympics. It is known that for more than half of the Olympic marathon, Brown was holding his own and was in the top 5 when an issue with a hernia arose. Brown was known to have issues with a hernia from time to time, and ultimately this forced him to withdraw and be disqualified from competition.

1939 Boston Marathon victory & iron man stunt

In 1939, Brown was the first runner to break the 2:30 mark on the Boston course.^[6][7] After the 17-mile mark in this race he also broke every checkpoint record. In 1939 Brown entered two different 26-mile races within 24 hours of one another, and won both races, which he later stated was to show critics and detractors that he had not quit in Berlin in 1936. He would later qualify for the 1940 U.S. Olympic team but the games were canceled due to World War II's outbreak in Europe.^[8]

Other notable moments in the Boston Marathon

Tarzan was also renowned for his antics during the Boston Marathon. In one of his earliest appearances as a runner in the Boston Marathon in 1935, he arrived in an outfit sewn together from one of his mother's old dresses by his sisters and he had sneakers that were falling apart and this was just 2 days after his mother had died. Approximately 21 miles into the race, Tarzan removed his sneakers and threw them into the crowd and ran the rest of the race barefoot (a total of 5 miles barefoot) and finished 13th. This act etched him in the memories of Boston Marathon fans and even endeared him in the hearts of many more. He had officially become a fan favorite and perhaps the most exciting, unorthodox and colorful character in the Boston Marathon's history. Then in the 1938 running of the Boston Marathon, Tarzan was leading on what was an unseasonably warm day when midway through the race, he ran off the road, waved to the crowd and jumped into Lake Cochituate to swim and cool off. After a while, Tarzan returned and ran the rest of the course, though other runners had already long since passed by. Most notably, fellow Rhode Islander Les Pawson (of Pawtucket, Rhode Island) won that year. Pawson was one of Tarzan's top rivals and friends. Tarzan was also seen arriving just minutes before the start of the 1939 Boston Marathon eating hot dogs and drinking milkshakes just before the race and claimed that he had missed breakfast. Incidents like these led one member of the media to write, insensitively, that Brown had "million dollar legs and a 5 cent mind", just one of many negative and even racially motivated assumptions about Brown, as a Native American, where his every success was for white Americans to share, acknowledging him as "their Indian", yet attributing what they perceived as his failures to his being "just an Indian".

Personal life, death and legacy

In addition to running, he worked as a stonemason and a shellfisherman. He married a fellow Narragansett Indian named Ethel (Wilcox) Brown (April 23, 1919 - October 14, 2015) and had four children. Many varied accounts of the events on the evening of August 23, 1975, directly leading to his death have been told, some stating Brown was in the wrong place at the wrong time, waiting for a ride home, as an altercation may have been taking place. However, amidst whatever confusion and circumstances there may have been, he was killed when a van hit him outside a bar in Westerly, Rhode Island.^[4] Brown's injuries proved to be fatal. There is an annual Mystic River road race named in his honor in Mystic, Connecticut every fall.

• "The economy in these depression times provided little for most Americans and nothing for Indians. They were a conquered people living on the margin... Ellison Myers Brown, born on the margin, saw running as his only way out of poverty." – Tom Derderian^[9]
• "Tarzan ran against people, not against numbers. He probably could have broke other records, but I never pushed him. When you're in a race you don't go out for records, you go out to win." – Tippy Salimeno^[10]

See also

• List of winners of the Boston Marathon
• Narragansett people
• Native Americans in the United States

References

External links

• "Running Today: Olympians: Ellison Myers 'Tarzan' Brown profile at Against the Winds: Traditions of Native American Running at Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University.