Local Man’s Athletic Pursuits Earn Presidential Awards
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When it comes to stacking up the accomplishments of a life well-lived, there are always going to be a lot of events worth mentioning. People are always able to pack in the achievements when you stretch a timeline to 40, or 50 or 60 years. With that said, there are not many, if any, who can say they have done more in the way of athletics than 76-year-old West Ellicott resident Ron Johnstone.
A 1959 graduate of Eisenhower High School, Johnstone has made it a life habit ever since he started running in 1978 to try and accomplish what most people would consider to be impossible. That could mean something that people believe is impossible when it comes to running, or biking, or weight lifting, or canoeing, or hiking, or scuba diving. If there is something hard worth doing, Johnstone has probably done it. He is a man who enjoys pushing the envelope--all of the envelopes actually.
Johnstone's entrance into the world of endurance and athletic achievement began in the late 1970s when he was ready to shed some of the bulk that he had picked up from weightlifting.
"I'm 5-foot-6 and I started weight lifting and I looked like a block of wood, and I wanted to lose some weight," Johnstone recalls of the early days. "I picked up a magazine, and it said if you ran 25 miles you could get a patch on your jacket."
While Johnston had always been a fan of the extreme when it came to exercise and outdoor activities, that was the moment when his drive really seemed to kick in.
A former sergeant of the 82nd Airborne Division of the United States Army, Johnstone entered civilian life with 108 parachute jumps to his name, and the motivation to seek out more adventure--wherever he was likely to find it.
That started with him earning the patch that he saw in that magazine, and really falling into the world of distance and endurance running. However many miles that Johnstone had run the day before, you could make a safe bet that he was going to try and do more the next day.
"I don't know what it is, but when you get running you get in a groove, it's like your mind is floating over your head," Johnstone said. "I just get into a groove and go mile after mile after mile. In the end you might start to hurt, but you might not notice it for a while."
It was in June of 1978 that Johnstone received one of the sundry awards that he would go on to accumulate throughout his life, this one a Presidential Sports Award from the administration of then-President Jimmy Carter.
The award was presented to Johnstone for weight lifting, and notes that he "has, through regular participation in sport, made a commitment to the active life."
While Johnstone did not set out to try and add to his initial Presidential Sports Award collection, he has done just that over the course of the past seven Presidential administrations, earning a commendation from each of America's president's going all the way back to Carter.
The achievements are too numerous to list, but range from the vast athletic interests that Johnstone has developed over the course of decades.
"You could do 20 (scuba) dives for a year, or say, canoeing you had to do so many miles in a year," Johnstone said of the qualifications for Sports and Physical Fitness Awards.
Despite his breadth of interest, Johnstone's intention was not to get an award from each administration for every one of his athletic endeavors, but he did think that it would be nice to get one from each administration. That was working out fine until Johnstone realized that he did not have his certificates from the administrations of George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.
When there is a change to a new administration, "they destroy all of the presidential awards," Johnstone said. "There is a guy in Washington D.C., who is the head of sports and nutrition for the president. Finally I got the real ones."
Aiding Johnstone in reclaiming his certificates from the Bush years, which include awards for endurance in skiing and walking, was the office of New York State Senator Cathy Young.
Six months after first seeking help to find his lost commendations, Johnstone had them in hand.
"Finally I got the real ones. I really appreciate Cathy because her and (assemblyman) Andy Goodell do so much for Chautauqua County."
Many of the activities that Johnstone has spent his time doing in the past three decades may seem like torture to a lot of people, like his yearly tradition of running a lap of the Southwestern track for each year of his life that was started at 59 and lasted all the way to 62. But he doesn't see it that way. For Johnstone, these achievements are liberating.
When Johnstone set out to run 60 laps on his 60th birthday, The Associated Press showed up and wanted to know why.
"They said, 'This is crazy, who does this?' I said, 'I really feel like I'm taking credit for something that ultra runners do all the time,'" he recalled.
Surely, the press and others said the same of Johnstone when he ran all the way to Erie to his father's house to celebrate the latter's 80th birthday at the time, or the time he ran a 105-mile race in Buffalo, or the time he went scuba diving into a frozen Chautauqua Lake to help retrieve lost snowmobiles.
"I'm a different kind of person," Johnstone said. "My brothers and sisters think that I'm nuts."
Whatever anyone may think of Johnstone, that doesn't seem to interest him the way that hiking parts of the Appalachian Trail, snow-shoeing in deep snow at his camp, and pushing the boundaries of what is possible does.
"I want to do it until God tells me I can't do it," Johnstone said of his active lifestyle.
Supporting Johnstone all the way has been his wife Paula, who has helped to see him though all the adventure of the past 40-plus years.
Could there possibly be anything left on Johnstone's bucket list?
Of course there is.
He would like to ride a bull at the Gerry Rodeo and go up in a hot air balloon.
Where there's a will, there's a way.