Bloomsday Perennial: Despite loss of inaugural T-shirts, he’ll keep completing Bloomsday ‘until God takes me home’

There are two kinds of Bloomsday Perennials: the ones who have the rare and prized first T-shirt, and those who don’t.

Many of those racers who have participated in each event still have it, along with the 48 others. But others either got rid of it along the way or lost track of it.

Perennial Don Franklin once had two of the coveted first-year finisher T-shirts. Now he has none.

He completed the first race, but enjoyed the experience so much that he stayed at the finish line to watch all the participants finish after he collected his shirt.

“It was so exciting,” he said. “We hung around to the end.”

As everything wrapped up, race organizers asked people if they would like a second T-shirt. Franklin took one, which he ended up giving to his brother. After several years, Franklin noticed that his first-year shirt was missing from his collection.

“I looked high and low for that shirt,” he said. “Couldn’t find it. I have no idea how the first shirt got out of the house, but it did.”

Franklin called his brother and asked if he still had the extra shirt Franklin had given him. His brother reported that he’d worn it until holes appeared, and then he threw it out. Franklin’s T-shirt collection is still missing the first entry.

Franklin moved to Spokane in the late 1960s to take a job at Roundup Grocery. He stayed with the company for decades as it was sold and resold, retiring from what was then Super Value in 2009.

He was a regular tennis player and worked out. Once, he even rode his bike to work for an entire summer. He and a friend decided to start jogging around the Shadle Park High School track.

“We started a quarter mile at a time,” he said.

They built up their distance and then took it to the streets when running around the track became boring. So it was only natural that they signed up for the first Bloomsday in 1977. There were roughly 1,200 people that first year, a tiny amount when compared to the juggernaut Bloomsday would become, but Franklin remembers being impressed at the number of participants that first year. He also remembers the heat, coupled with the late start.

“Thank God they changed the time to 9 a.m.,” he said.

Franklin did other runs as well, including marathons in Coeur d’Alene and Portland. But he kept coming back to Bloomsday because he liked the camaraderie and would always see people he knew as he ran.

“Bloomsday was always fun,” he said. “It was kinda short, but it was a challenge.”

As Bloomsday became more popular, Franklin learned how to make the run go smoothly, including how to stay ahead of the pack so as to not get bogged down.

“You had to be at the bridge in 13 minutes or less or you wouldn’t be able to run,” he said, referring to the Marne Bridge that takes Riverside Avenue over Latah Creek.

He learned to stare at the ground when running up hills so he wouldn’t get discouraged. As he ran, he would focus on a runner in front of him to help him keep the pace. He also enjoyed meeting people along the way.

“I’ve run across some real characters,” he said. “You meet some of the greatest people.”

Every year, he would get to the starting line early so he had plenty of time to visit with other runners. He also loves the community aspect, including the musicians who dot the course and the volunteers who hand out water and otherwise keep the race running.

“If we didn’t have all that, it would be a tough 7.46 miles,” he said.

He’s done Bloomsday with a heavy cold, but never had to deal with any injuries. The closest he came was in the 10th race, when someone tripped and fell in front of him, causing a cascade of falling people. He was trying not to step on anyone and stumbled.

“I went down and my knee hit the pavement,” he said.

Franklin ran the race with blood streaming down his shin, but no lasting injury.

“I’m not a person who’s not going to finish, even if I have to crawl,” he said.

At one point he developed stress fractures in both feet and had to stop running for a bit. After he recovered, he decided to give up marathons. These days, he walks instead of runs.

In 2014, he had a heart attack. Franklin remembers that his wife drove him to the emergency room and he was rushed down the hallway in a gurney, slamming through doors, on his way to the operating room. He’s been under the care of a cardiologist ever since.

Franklin and his wife, Peggy, are snowbirds, spending the winter in Sun City, Arizona. While there, they train. They take a sit-and-be-fit class and use the bike, treadmill and weights to stay fit.

“They started calling us the gym rats because we were there every day,” he said. “We came home and did Bloomsday, and it was a piece of cake.”

Franklin and his wife have done Bloomsday virtually since COVID. He’s worried about getting sick after running in close quarters with 50,000 or so of his best friends.

“I don’t need to take the chance of catching something,” he said.

However, he’s thinking of making an exception for the 50th Bloomsday in May.

“I may do the Bloomsday course, only one more time,” he said. “I miss taking that route with everybody.”

But Franklin, now 80, said he doesn’t plan to stop participating in Bloomsday after next year. He’ll keep spending a lot of time in the gym, staying fit.

“I will probably go until God takes me home,” he said.