Martha Haynes, Volunteer

The recent movie "You've Got Mail" tells of two people, hostile toward each other in daily life, who have a very positive relationship by way of electronic mail, but don't realize it because they use different names for their email. Our volunteer award tonight goes to someone who first established contact with us by way of email. And happily, unlike the movie, the relationship has been very good both electronically and in person.

I received an email from her, probably about mid-1997, asking for information about upcoming races in Tallahassee. I complied and suggested she join the Club so she would get the race calendar in each issue of the newsletter. She soon joined and I began seeing her name in race results. After that our email relationship truly blossomed as she continued to seek me out with such surprisingly searching questions as, "How hilly is the Under-the-Oaks course?" Still, the closest we got to meeting was the Palace Saloon Race last year. Just after the one-mile mark I tore a muscle, the name of which I've already forgotten, and finished by hopping, skipping, running backwards and sideways, often clutching my leg in pain. When I saw the race results, her name appeared just a few places behind mine. So I introduced myself in an email message as the guy who was doing all those bizarre things during the race and apologized for my behavior. She said she felt very sorry for me.

Many of us have since enjoyed meeting her at races in Tallahassee, Bainbridge, and even in Perry. For, besides running well enough last year to earn sixth place in her Grand Prix age group with 46 points, she found the time to take over the organization and direction of the Florida Forest Festival 5k in Perry, including having the course USATF certified by Bill McGuire. This is a race with a long history, and the only road race in Perry, so many of us old timers were very pleased to see it continuing to be supported in such fine fashion. While she often comes to Tallahassee to run races, she never comes here to work on what has been her major contribution to GWTC, the setting up and maintaining of our Club's site on the world-wide web. She can do it all without ever leaving Perry. She is, perhaps, our most remotely located volunteer ever.

A few years ago, Fran Bridges launched us onto the Internet by surprising us with a web page she had put up on a server at FSU to demonstrate what could be done. Suddenly we were on the Web, but neither she nor Bonnie Wright, who later tried to help, really had the time to maintain it, and since it was located on FSU's server there were some things we could not do with it.

It is now hosted on server space provided by our Club President's law firm and has been completely redesigned. Most importantly, it is up to date. There probably are not many of us here who have ever set up and maintained a web site. It is not strenuous work, but it is tedious and time-consuming, and we have our Volunteer of the Year to thank for it. Information goes flying electronically down to Perry and she has it up on the site, usually by the next day. This award recognizes and thanks Martha Haynes for her important contributions and commitments to Gulf Winds Track Club and our running community in 1998.

Text and presentation by Rex Cleveland