The first weekend of the month found me stepping foot in the Billerica Memorial High School for the first time in 40 years. Technically I’d never been there before as the entire building was demolished and rebuilt. I’d missed the grand opening two years ago but could not pass up the opportunity to check out the new Community Hall of Fame. They combined the Athletic HOF with Educator, and the Town of Billerica Civic HOF. They also created a tiled wall that will have each person’s name on it, you can press the tile and the information will come up on a big screen. It looked very nice! As this was the first year of the combined Community HOF they were re-inducting all former members of each branch as a group. I decided to go, mostly to see the new school (and track) but also to see if any other HOF members would show up. The tour was impressive, the building is just amazing. The ceremony was nice. I sort of remembered Helen Potter (she was inducted in the Civic HOF). I was surprised to see coach Sid (Jon Sidorovich) who I chatted with for a bit. He came up and introduced himself and said “give me two guesses, you are either Gus Silva or Dave Dunham”. I don’t mind being confused for Gus! Right before the ceremony started I saw Mike Granfield. That made my day, Mike originally got me into running and sent me down this path so many years ago. After the ceremony I headed out for a run over to the Marshall Middle School and a couple of laps on the track. It brought back so many memories, it really hasn’t changed at all. I even did a loop around LaSallette which was our go-to workout loop and the finish of our cross country races. I’m glad I went, I won’t wait another 40 years to go back. Afterward I checked out when I was last on the track, it turned out my final home meet was in May of 1982. I ran an unusual double taking 1st in the mile (4:28) then heading right to the start line for the 440. It was one of the very few times I did a quarter that was not part of the mile relay. I ended up in third place in 55.8, .6 behind the winner and .2 behind 2nd place.
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