Andy Payne

Andrew Hartley Payne, born November 17, 1907, in Foyil, Oklahoma, was an American member of the Cherokee Nation who is best remembered as the winner of the first Trans-American Footrace, an ultramarathon run in 1928. The race, also called the Bunion Derby, ran 3,423.5 miles from Los Angeles to New York City along much of U.S. Route 66, and he finished the 84-day staged run in 573 hours, 4 minutes and 34 seconds. The first prize was 25,000 dollars, with which he paid off his family's farm mortgage and built his parents a home. He later worked as a reporter, in sales and in the oil field before serving as clerk of the Oklahoma Supreme Court from January 1935 through December 1972, and he died on December 3, 1977.