Bobbi Gibb - Wind in the Fire

The Institute for the Study of Natural SystemsPress

Cambridge Massachusetts

Anniversary Edition

Copyright 2016 by Roberta (Bobbi) Gibb

All Rights Reserved

ISBN: 978-1370404025

Book Design: Y42K Publishing Services

http://www.y42k.com/publishing-services/

Books by Bobbi Gibb

Wind in the Fire

The Art of Inflation

To Boston with Love

DiMa

The Art of Meditative Running

The Art of Economics

Visions and Social Consciousness

Seven Years of Seasons

Wind in the Fire is about myexperiences from 1964 to 1966, from the time I first saw the BostonMarathon and fell in love with it, to Patriots Day, April 19,1966, when I became the first woman ever to run the BostonMarathon.

This book is not just about running, but isabout overcoming obstacles, challenging prejudice, making adifference, tenacity, perseverance and love. In this volume Idescribe my spiritual and philosophical quest as I seek the answersof some of lifes biggest questions.

This quest follows its own story line ofdevelopment in a sequential, logical line of thinking about thenature of existence and about the mind-body problem. This innerstory is written in italics, where as the outer story is written inregular type. The inner and outer stories intertwine as theyproceed.

Names have been changed to protect theprivacy of the people involved. The dialogue has been constructed,not verbatim, but in a way to capture the essence of the people andthe ideas.

Your comments and feedback are welcome.

Thank you to all you wonderful people. Mayyour lives be filled with happiness, health, joy and love.

To all my

Beloved friends and family who helped me

On my journey

To my parents who gave me

The gift of life

And to

Future generations

Its Patriots Day, 1964, only four and ahalf months after President John Fitzgerald Kennedysassassination. Under the Dallas sun, for one horrible moment we sawa hideous subterranean river of evil flowing through the world,causing a death that pulled the vision of Camelot away from oureyes and left us disillusioned by the terror of its destructivepower. The Vietnam War rages and Kennedy, who fought againstcommunism and supported our involvement in that South Asiancountry, is dead. So is Diem, South Vietnams U.S.-supportedpresident, assassinated just three weeks before Kennedy.

We have lived through the disastrous Bay ofPigs fiasco in 1961, as our government attempted a covert operationto help exiled Cubans unseat Fidel Castro. We have survived the1962 standoff with Premier Nikita Khrushchev and the Soviet Unionover their missile installations in Cuba. President Kennedy had putthe nation on red alert, and for a few precarious hours we teeteredon the brink of nuclear war. Finally, the prayers of millions ofpeople around the world were answered, and the Soviet battleshipsturned back, our planet was saved, for the time being, but thethreat of nuclear holocaust remains. Every large American city isthe target of a Soviet missile and every large Soviet city is thetarget of an American missile. The destruction of countless livesis terrifyingly surreal, and yet it could happen with a simple pushof a button. How did we come to this insanity?

I was born in the middle of World War II,and it seems as though we have been at war ever since: the Cold Warwith the Soviets, the Korean War and now Vietnam. Its not theSoviet people or the Koreans, or the Vietnamese we distrust andfear, but their totalitarian governments. I wonder if well everescape from this madness and learn to live peacefully on the sameearth with people who should be our friends. After all, the Sovietpeople have been in the grip of a ruthless government that theythemselves distrust and fear. Stalin wasnt elected, nor wasKhrushchev, although he indicates a willingness to correct some ofthe excesses of his predecessors era. But now their governmentand the other most powerful totalitarian government in the world,China, have joined in the Communist block, which is perceived asthreat to the free world. Yet to them, the free world is a threat.A threat to what? Had we not, only nineteen years ago, freed theChinese from a cruel Japanese occupation?

Anti-Vietnam War protests have been growingin size and frequency as President Lyndon Johnson escalates ourinvolvement in the conflict. But despite the tragedy of the risingbody count in Vietnam, the Peace Corps has become a potent forcefor spreading American goodwill around the world, and stateside theWar on Poverty attempts to help the disenfranchised regain afoothold in society.

In August of 1963, only six and a halfmonths ago, one hundred thousand people had marched on Washingtonin support of Civil Rights. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.spoke eloquently, moving us with the dream he has for America.Black and White are beginning to work together to make civil rightsa reality for everyone, no matter their ethnic or racial heritage.Hope is rising up among all races that America can do theimpossible: that we can have a truly color and race blind society,where a persons skin color or ethnic background will be only oneaspect of who they are, no more important than the accidental placewhere they were born. Can we have a country where what is importantis who you are as a person, not to what group you happen tobelong?

There is a new consciousness springing upfrom a new generation. We are experiencing growing pains as anation born in colonialism and rising to an entirely newconsciousness of human dignity and freedom that will, we hope,inspire the world.

The culture of the times reflects thedizziness of this struggle, the elation, as it looks possible, thedespair as once again it is ripped out of our grasp.

In February of this year,the Beatles, with their bowl haircuts and sweet young faces burstupon the stage on the Ed Sullivan Show singing She l Loves You... Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. The angelic, stirring voice of Joan Baez, trembles as shesings Dylans song, Blowin in the Wind. Peter Paul and Mary croonWe Shall Overcome. The audience joins in, tears rolling downcheeks, feeling a love that expands to all the world. Woody Guthrieleads us in singing, This land is your land. This land is my land,from the Mississippi to the New York Highland. We are inspired bya vision larger than ourselves.

We are working for a better world, a placewhere all people can live in harmony, and create vibrant peacefulsocieties that respect one another and prosper together in freedomand democracy. We know that for each individual to be healed,whole, happy and fully engaged, the whole of society must behealed. We know too that it must be the people themselves whocreate their own government by means of which they governthemselves, and that unless a government governs for the good ofthe whole, it cannot long survive.

Bob Dylan sings that The Times They Are aChangin', telling us in his nasal whine what we all know; theseare deeply trying, transformative times.

Yet, there is no womens movement.

Growing up I had fumedover the injustices and unfairness of what I saw my future rolewould be as a woman in our society. There were few, if any,opportunities for a woman unless she wanted to be a teacher, nurseor secretary-- jobs she would be expected to give up once shemarried. And once she did marry a woman often found herselftrapped. She couldnt have a credit card in her name, let alone amortgage. Husband and wife were joined through marriage as one, andthe one was thehusband. Women gave up their names, their identities, and far toooften, their dreams. Witnessing my own mothers struggle to retainher identity and her dignity was painful to see.