Dave
Komonen 1934
When Dave Komonen
was voted the best athlete of 1933 by Canadian sports
writers, the moment was bittersweet. On the bright side he
had managed, in four and a half years since leaving
Finland, to establish himself as the best distance runner
on the continent. |
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Matti
Komonen with his father's trophies |
The achievements for which he
was honored included victories in the national marathon
championships of both Canada and the United States and a
second-place finish in the illustrious Boston Marathon. There
were a string of lesser victories too, won with the same
flying feet that Komonen liked to clad in homemade shoes.
A writer of the time said Komonen (a)
had collected enough laurels in his adopted country to open a
florist shop and enough cups to become a silversmith.
That was the problem. If he
could have become a florist or silversmith, or anything else
for that matter. Komonen would have jumped at the chance. He
was unemployed. With all his fame and glory in the sports
world he was nearly broke. Nowhere in the city of Toronto, it
seemed, was there a steady job to be found. Komonen had been
looking ever since following his brother to Canada in 1929. If
times seemed bleak when he first arrived, especially for an
immigrant who couldn't speak the language, they were worse now
with the country caught in the grip of the Great Depression.
Komonen picked up odd jobs where he could find them, a few
days here, a few there. The last had been with a coal company,
driving a truck, where in his best week he had earned three
dollars. He tried to earn money making shoes but found he
could hardly recoup the cost of materials.
Cobbling was a sideline with
Komonen. Born December 16, 1898, in Kakisalmi,
(b) Finland, he was a
farmer and carpenter known as Taavi Komonen before emigrating
to Canada. Frail and somewhat sickly in youth, he became
nonetheless an accomplished middle distance runner in the
Finnish military. His sports idol, a man with whom he
sometimes trained, was Paavo Nurmi, twelve times an Olympic
champion in middle distance events in the 1920s.
In Toronto, where Komonen found
his name anglicized to Dave, he looked for work in the
construction industry, hoping to make use of his carpentry
skills. But his poverty only worsened, money so scarce at
times that he lacked nourishing food. He liked fresh fish and
rye bread but often subsisted on soup and crackers, an
inadequate diet that affected his running.
''You give me the food I want,"
he once said, "and I'll win every race in this country from
five miles Up." (49)
Komonen joined the Monarch
Athletic Club in Toronto, becoming its star member and winning
almost as many races as the rest of its athletes combined.
Club executive members sympathized with his hand-to-mouth
existence and did what they could to help him find work. Lou
Marsh, sports editor of the Toronto Star, also appealed
through his newspaper for someone, anyone, to give Komonen a
break. ''Here is an honest, hard-working lad with not a lazy
bone in his body," Marsh wrote, arguing that a steady job was
a small thing to ask for someone who had brought such honor to
Canada. But to no avail.
On New Year's Day, 1934, his
year of honor behind, Komonen made a desperate decision.
Gathering up his few possessions, he walked to the Toronto
railway station and bought a one-way ticket to Sudbury. It
cost eight dollars, nearly all the money he had in his pocket.
Komonen chose the northern Ontario mining city for several
reasons, the main one bemg that he had run and won a ten-mile
race sponsored by the Sudbury Lions Club the previous July and
had made several acquaintances there. Sam Rothschild, a club
leader, had driven to Toronto to pick up Komonen and a couple
of other Monarch runners, arranging accommodation while they
were in Sudbury and making sure they got back to Toronto
afterward.
Komonen had good memories of
Sudbury. The people were friendly, fond of athletics and there
was a large Finnish community in which he could converse with
comfort in his native tongue. There had, in fact, been a good
number of Finns in the crowd of five thousand that turned out
at Athletic Park to watch the closing laps of the ten-mile
race. Komonen had spoken to some of them about the possibility
of moving to Sudbury and found the response encouraging,
several promising to keep watch on local carpentry jobs and
notify him when work became available. A few months later he
also wrote to Rothschild for help. Rothschild made inquiries
and advised Komonen to be patient. But when nothing had
happened by the time Komonen was chosen athlete of the year,
(c) just prior to
Christmas, 1933, he decided to force the issue by going to
Sudbury anyway, hoping his moment in the spotlight would work
to his advantage.
The boldness of the move
clashed with Komonen's quiet demeanor but, as he said later,
"I felt I had nothing to lose. I could starve to death just as
cheerfully in Sudbury as Toronto.''
(50)
Once there he threw himself at
the mercy of Rothschild who that day, January 2, 1934, took
Komonen to a Lions Club meeting and introduced him to members.
When the runner told his tale of hardship the response was
immediate. E.A. Mitchell, a Sudbury businessmen, promised
Komonen a carpentry job by February I and Harry Riddell,
proprietor of the Queen's Hotel, offered lodging in the
interim.
Immensely grateful, Komonen was
soon employed as a carpenter at the Frood Mine, applying
himself so diligently that friends cautioned him against
overdoing it. He also found permanent living quarters at the
home of Joe Halonen, a chiropractor and fellow runner.
"We'd work all day then start
our running around eight o'clock,'' Halonen said. "We would be
out every day. In winter when we couldn't run we used to ski
to keep in shape." (51)
With a regular income, Komonen
indulged himself in food, to such an extent that Halonen
thought it was the reason Komonen's stomach was sometimes
sensitive when he raced.
''He always wanted to eat
before a race. 'You can't do it,' I kept telling him. He lost
once in Hamilton because of that. He ate a big meal and then
tried to run afterward. He had only gone three miles and was
full of gas, and that finished him."
(52)
Komonen fell ill for a period
in the winter of 1934, his temperature rising to one hundred
and two degrees Fahrenheit. Again Halonen wondered if the
cause wasn't Komonen's intemperate eating habits. He urged
Komonen to watch his diet more carefully and remain at home
until the fever subsided but Komonen was reluctant to do
either.
Komonen joined the Frood Mine
Athletic Association that winter, welcomed by president Herman
Mutz and others of the closely-knit athletic fraternity.
Komonen trained as best he could through the cold weather,
often trying to log eight miles in the morning and another
fifteen at night, while still applying himself zealously at
the mine. Friends again suggested he was working too hard for
his own good but he scorned the notion.
''No," he insisted, ''I like my
job and I'll stick. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise."
Weather plagued Komonen's
training as much as work in the winter of 1934, fierce cold
and deep drifts blanketing the landscape of northern Ontario.
Spring, which followed with sudden thaws, added to the
problems, replacing the drifts with soggy roads that made
training equally difficult.
On Easter weekend, when "the
Frood" gathered together enough money to send Komonen to
Toronto for a race, he was stricken with cramps and dropped
out. Acquaintences in the big city wondered aloud whether he
had become too comfortable in Sudbury and Toronto newspapers
questioned whether he still had the will to win. Humiliated
Komonen returned to Sudbury, offering to repay his expenses.
The Frood, more sympathetic, refused to hear of it. Talk
turned instead to the next big event on the athletic calendar,
the Boston Marathon.
Komonen's association with the
Boston Marathon went back to 1931 when he entered as a member
of the Monarch Athletic Club of Toronto and ran seventh. He
missed the 1932 Boston Marathon, returning to Finland for an
unsuccessful bid to make the Finnish Olympic team of that
year, but was back in Boston in 1933, the year he ran second.
Leslie Pawson of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, defeated Komonen
easily, 2:31:01 to 2:36:04, but the race was the first of
three cited as the reason when he was named Canadian athlete
of the year at the end of 1933.
The others were the Canadian
and American national marathon championships. On June 17,
1933, Komonen ran from Mt. Vernon to the steps of the White
House in Washington in a time of 2:53:43 to win the American
title and on August 5, 1933, he captured the Canadian title at
Toronto with a time of 2:40:58.
Because of this Komonen was
favored to win at Boston in 1934 but the race was one he
almost didn't run.
''I'm not sure I will no.'' he
said. ''It costs money to travel to The Frood Mine Athletic
Association was small and poor compared to Komonen's old
Toronto club but it was decided in the end that a way must be
found to send Komonen to Boston. A last-minute canvas was made
for funds and Komonen, packing two pair of homemade shoes, set
off in a car driven by Kust Helin, a Finnish friend. Thev left
so hastily their departure went all but unnoticed.
"Until the Frood came to
Komonen's rescue," the Sudbury Star noted later, "it was
thought that the Finn might be obliged to run from Sudbury to
Boston as a preliminary canter. Nobody offered him an
automobile, a railway engine or a berth between the rods, and
so it was assumed he would have to hoof it."
The field of one hundred and
ninety-three runners entered in the Boston Marathon included
an honored cast of old and young athletes. The veterans
numbered among their ranks the indefatigable Clarence DeMar,
now seven times a champion, his last victory in 1930 at age
forty-two; Whitey Michelsen, Johnny Miles' contemporary; Dick
Wilding, and Ville Kyronen, a Finnish New Yorker who eighteen
years earlier, in 1916, had won the Yonkers Marathon. They
were joined by relative newcomers to top marathon ranks,
runners like John A. Kelley and Willie Steiner.
Komonen and Helin wandered
about Boston before the race, collecting newspapers and
souvenirs. Komonen couldn't read the accounts of the upcoming
marathon. English still eluded him even though April 19, the
day of the marathon, would be the fifth anniversary of the day
he had left his native Finland. But he recognized his photo in
some of the pages and chuckled at the sight. He would take the
articles back to Sudbury and paste them in his scrapbook even
if he didn't know quite what they said about him. Komonen also
bought, as souvenirs from Boston, an umbrella, and a
carpenter's plane to take back to his job at the mine.
When marathon day arrived, with
seventy degree weather and a stiff wind that blew at right
angles across the road from Hopkington to Boston, Komonen
laced on an old and battered pair of shoes. The soles were
worn, the arches patched and repatched, and the buckskin from
which they were fashioned stained by dirt and time. Komonen
had made a new pair of shoes especially for the marathon but
set them aside for the old. These were his lucky shoes, the
ones that had carried him to victory in the last five
marathons he had run, and he decided to wear them one more
time.
The early leader of the 1934
Boston Marathon was Willie Steiner, a Gemman-American Athletic
Club runner from New York. Steiner pulled away from a knot of
runners that included Komonen and opened up a margin of
several hundred yards. Worried that Steiner might slip beyond
reach if allowed to go unchallenged long enough, Komonen set
out to run him down. At Natick, ten miles into the race,
Steiner was still a couple of hundred yards in front but
Komonen was gaining in second. The women of Wellesley College
cheered Steiner's prancing style, knees lifted high in the
manner of a sprinter, as he swept past their familiar vantage
point and into the second half of the race. But between
Wellesley and Aubumdale Komonen caught the New Yorker and
finally moved into the lead.
Once overtaken, Steiner quickly
fell from contention and Komonen found another runner
challenging at his heels, John Kelley, a florist from
Arlington, Massachusetts. Kelley was a gaunt and determined
runner, the favorite of the Boston crowd that day. The two men
locked in battle as they entered the Newton Hills, hair soaked
and bodies glistening with sweat as they ascended the grades.
The outcome, so often the case, was decided at the top of the
last and steepest rise. Kelley cracked from the strain, the
scene portrayed this way in the Boston Post the following day.
''The Gothic spires of Boston
College pierce the heavens this morning as twin testimonials.
They rise in all their majesty as monuments of fortitude
exemplified by a poor Finn, Dave Komonen of Canada. They stand
too as tombstones in the graveyard of a gamester's hopes,
Johnny Kelley of Arlington. For within the shadows of those
classic towers the impoverished Finn yelled, 'Rata Auki,'
accelerated his stride and swept on to glorious victory in the
thirty-eighth annual Boston Athletic Association Marathon.''
Komonen ran the last five miles
of the race alone, crossing what some that year called "the
Finnish line" in 2:32:53 4/5. Kelley
(d) was second in 2:36:50 2/5 while Steiner held on
for third in 2:40:29 1/5. Alex Burnside and Percy Weyer, old
friends of Komonen from the Monarch Athletic Club, finished
fourth and eighth respectively in 2:44:32 and 2:46:06.
Komonen was a perplexing sight.
For much of the race he had worn a knotted handkerchief to
ward off the sun. In the BAA Clubhouse, where he was ringed by
reporters, the handkerchief was gone, revealing a fashionless
sugar bowl haircut and a man who could smile but comprehend
almost none of the questions he was asked. Finns from the
Boston area stepped into the breach to translate as Komonen
sipped soda water and ate the beef stew that had become the
standard post-race meal served by the BAA to runners. The
facts of his story thus gleaned the Boston newspapers wrote
approvingly of the new champion and his effortless running
style.
"He is not awkward, nor is he
sloppy in his performance," said the Boston Herald. "He does
not sway, he does not flail his arms about, he does not drag
his feet in a skip-gaited shuffle like others. He is a running
stylist with beautiful arm, knee and leg action. He is a
continuity of efficiency, not mere power. He increases his
speed imperceptibly, the only obvious feature being the way he
draws away from his rivals."
When Komonen changed from his
running clothes to a suit and prepared to leave the clubhouse,
he discovered that souvenir hunters had made off with his
socks. He found a pair that afternoon at the Allston, home of
Karl A. Hilli, where he met local Finns at a reception in his
honor. That night he went first to an exhibition at the Boston
Garden then drove by car to Maynard where he was guest of
honor at a dance arranged by the Kanto Athletic Club, a branch
of the Finnish Athletic League of Maynard. He danced until
after midnight, wheeling flaxen-haired women about a polished
dance floor to the music of a Finnish orchestra, then left the
next morning for the long trip back to Sudbury.
A cranky customs officer
accosted Komonen and Helin at the border, pulling out the
umbrella and carpenter's plane along with a carton of
cigarettes and assessing duty on all three items. Komonen paid
the charges on the first two but balked at the
two-dollar-and-forty-cent charge for the cigarettes, leaving
them behind. Missed in the search were three cigars tucked
away in a suitcoat pocket.
"I guess he didn't see them,"
Komonen said. (53)
Lou Marsh hailed Komonen's
victory.
''Thanks, Sudbury for taking
Taavi Komonen in and giving him a chance," Marsh wrote in the
Toronto Star. ''And thanks to the Frood miners who paid his
way down to Boston. He didn't need much of a chance — no
mollycoddling, did he? He just put in his day's work and then
went out and trained through the snow and slush, worked hard,
trained simply. Dave Komonen got a raw deal from Toronto. He
got a good deal from Sudbury and I'm tickled that well-known
shade of red to know that he has made good."
The Sudbury Board of Trade
planned a banquet in Komonen's honor and Mayor W. Marr Brodie
called council into session to discuss a suitable gift from
the city. (54)
''Someone has made the
suggestion that he be given a public reception but I am afraid
that he might arrive at an inconvenient hour and it would be a
flop,'' said the mayor.
"I think some reception should
be given," said Alderman J. D. Mclnnes.
"I got in touch with Herman
Mutz, " the mayor added, " and he said the Frood were going to
join in the function and give him a club bag. I had the idea
of presenting him with a watch but it wouldn't be suitable. He
already has one."
''Golden spikes for his
shoes,'' suggested Alderman Noel De Tally.
''There's no use in presenting
him with a cup, or anything hke that,'' said the mayor. ''He
has so many of them."
Alderman Mclnnes suggested a
purse of gold.
"He's not a married man?" asked
Alderman Carrington. ''We might get a wife for him then,"
suggested Alderman E. D. White.
The mayor smiled. ''We want to
present him with an asset," Brodie said.
''A tie pin?" offered
Carrington.
''They're not being worn these
days,'' the mayor observed.
"Feeling fine after winning the
race,'' the message said. "See you soon.'' Ears twigged in
Sudbury when news of Komonen's sweetheart filtered back to
northern Ontario. Three days later the Sudbury Star hit the
streets with a bold front-page headline — Komonen Reveals
Divorce.
Beneath it ran the embarrassing
story that Komonen was not the devil-may-care bachelor he had
seemed to be in Boston. At home in Finland, left behind when
he had come to Canada, were a wite and two sons. A Toronto
newspaper carried the news first, publishing a photograph of
Komonen and his family, taken when he had resumed to Finland
in 1932 for the Finnish Olympic trials. The Sudbury newspaper
confronted him with issue and he made a reluctant statement.
"I have applied for a divorce
and expect that the papers will come through at any time,'' he
said. "I am leaving her my farm in Finland and she is to have
one of the children. I want to bring the other boy to Canada
with me." (e)
Komonen complained about the
intrusion into his personal affairs, denying any romantic link
with the Toronto woman and maintaining that friends were well
aware of his situation. The press should not have made the
matter public, he said.
"Lou Marsh knew about it but he
was asked to say nothing and he kept the faith."
The episode passed and
attention shifted back to Komonen's athletic life and the
British Empire Games scheduled that August in London. Komonen
wanted to compete but was not yet a Canadian citizen.
On May 5, 1934, five years to
the day from Komonen's arrival in Canada, he filed
naturalization papers at the office of Sudbury Crown attorney
E. D. Wilkins. But there was a problem. Canadian law required
a three-month waiting period for citizenship, meaning that
Komonen would miss by three weeks the marathon trial scheduled
in July at Hamilton. Organizers of the Canadian team protested
bitterly that Canada would be deprived of its finest distance
athlete by a legal technicality. The question was eventually
resolved in Komonen's favor. He would be allowed to compete in
the trial on the understanding that his citizenship papers
would be finalized before going to London
(f) The matter was no
sooner settled, however, than it became academic.
Heat forced Komonen to drop out
of the trial and he failed to qualify for the team, a jolt to
Canadian team organizers and Komonen's many followers in
Sudbury and elsewhere. Harold Webster of the Hamilton Olympic
Club went to London in Komonen's place and ended up winning
the games marathon in 2:40:36.
The trial signalled the end of
Komonen's years in the athletic spotlight. He returned to
Boston in 1935, intent on setting the course record he had
promised a year earlier in the flush of victory that he would
return to set, but the race went instead to Johnny Kelley, the
man Komonen had defeated in 1934.
"Hailed a year ago as Canada's
premier marathoner,'' said the Sudbury Star, echoing the
assessment of most, ''Komonen appears to have passed his
prime."
Komonen lived in Sudbury until
1951, never losing his passion for running. Several times he
returned to Boston, and to other races that had once been his
for the entering. There were no more major triumphs but he
competed for the pleasure and camaraderie he found in doing
so. When he gave up racing he remained an athlete, running for
health and enjoyment.
Komonen labored as a carpenter
all his years in Canada, working at times as a foreman on
Sudbury construction projects. A son, Matti
(g), moved to Canada, also
settling in Sudbury. Unto, his second son, remained in
Finland, where Komonen himself eventually returned when he
left Sudbury behind.
Komonen remained in Finland and
fathered a daughter, Elia. After retirement, he divided his
time between a winter condominium in Helsinki and a summer
home in Heinola. He grew to dislike the condominium, having
little to do but walk his dog, and became impatient for the
spring each year when he could go back to Heinola. He tended a
garden in Heinola, plants flowering at his touch, and went for
long circuitous walks, amazing his family at the distances he
sometimes covered.
The athletic community in
Heinola held a ten-kilometre race each year in his honor, an
event that filled him with pride, bringing back memories of
his own days as a competitive athlete. And each spring he
looked forward to Patriot's Day and the news from Boston.
On the day of the Boston
Marathon in 1978, when a lithe blond runner named Bill Rodgers
was sweeping to victory as had a lithe blond runner long ago
in 1934, Komonen lay near death in Helsinki, the victim of
spinal cancer. Two days later on April 19, that quirky date
that kept cropping up in his life, the day he left Finland for
Canada, the day he won the laurel wreath in Boston, Komonen
died. He was seventy-nine.
Two years before his death
Komonen spent the winter in Florida to escape the cold of
Helsinki, living five months with his son. He puttered happily
about the yard, mowing lawns, tending shrubs and flowers.
Neighbors remarked that the property had never looked better.
Matti would pass the compliments on to his father and the old
man would smile.
When he wasn't fussing about
his son's yard, Komonen ventured off for long walks, often
along the beach. He liked the glint of the sun on the water
and the sound of waves on the sand, and he liked the highways
and byways of Lake Worth. Five, sometimes seven miles a day,
he would walk.
"He went distances I wouldn't
dream of going,'' recalls his daughter-in-law. "He was in good
shape, and when he walked he was fast. It was almost half
running. It was the way he was.''
Footnotes
(a)
Portions of this chapter are based on interviews January I I,
1982, with Mr. and Mrs. Matti Komonen of Lake Worth, Florida.
(b) Part of the former
Soviet Union.
(c) A similar honor was denied by the Amateur Athletic Union
of Canada because Komonen was not a Canadian citizen.
(d) Kelley won the Boston
Marathon in 1935 and 1945 and finished second a record seven
times. He also set an unrivalled record for longevity in the
race, completing his fiftieth Boston Marathon at age
seventy-three in 1981 and continued to run the race annually
thereafter.
(e) The divorce was never
finalized. Komonen's first wife died in 1942 and he remarried
in 1951.
(f) The papers were never
finalized. Komonen remained a Finnish citizen all his life.
(g) Matti Komonen, a
watchmaker and jeweler, and Esko Komoncn, a brother of the
runner, are residents of Lake Worth, Florida. |
