Walt Stack

Walt Stack, born September 28, 1908, was a hod carrier by trade and an icon of the San Francisco running community who ran approximately 62,000 miles in his lifetime. Even in his seventies and eighties he ran many more marathons and 50-mile ultramarathons than all but a few of his running peers, and he appeared in Nike's first Just Do It advertisement on July 1, 1988, when he was still running at 80. He grew up in poverty, lied about his age to join the US Army as a teenager, then sailed from Baltimore, was a member of the Industrial Workers of the World from 1927 to 1931, and became an open Communist and a top recruiter for the party in California. In the 1960s he helped found the Dolphin South End Running Club, which admitted women and children for the first time. He died on January 19, 1995.