Marathon founder Phil Heit finds home in New Albany

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Healthy New Albany

There wasn’t a specific moment when Phil Heit realized he had an interest in health and wellness.

It was simply an interest that developed at a young age and followed him into adulthood – and has become a progressively bigger and bigger part of his life.

As a young boy growing up in Brooklyn, he was engaged in sports.

“I would basically live in the schoolyard from morning through night,” Heit says. “I’d play all sorts of sports, from basketball to softball. I ran track and cross country in high school.”

He lived a typical life in Brooklyn, he says. He followed the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers. His parents were always very encouraging; they wanted him to get an education. That didn’t come without challenges, though. Heit calls himself a “role model” for anyone who doesn’t think they can make it through school.

“I didn’t take education seriously at the beginning of college,” says Heit, who attended Brooklyn College. “It took me six years to get my bachelor’s degree because I was working full-time and going to school at night. I wasn’t taking my grades seriously. One day, I got a spark that said, ‘get your degree.’ I wanted to be a teacher, and that’s what I did.”

While teaching two nights a week at a local community college, Heit also went to school at night to work on his master’s degree. He was also coaching after school, and teaching physical education and a health class at Sheepshead Bay High School. Brooklyn is also where Heit met his wife of 46 years, Sheryl. Today, they have two daughters who live in San Francisco, as well as a grandson and a granddaughter. 

On top of an already packed schedule, Heit competed in marathons and was personally involved in the rise of marathons through his running group, the New York Road Runners Club – including the New York City Marathon, which he helped to start. Every Sunday, Heit and the group would meet at Prospect Park and run across the Brooklyn Bridge, into Manhattan, through the Lower East Side and Greenwich Village, up Fifth Avenue, through Central Park and then back to Brooklyn. It was about a 20-mile run.

In 1976, everything changed. The Ohio State University recruited Heit for a professorship in health education.

“There was definitely culture shock,” he says. “In 1976, there was basically nothing here that I was used to experiencing back in Brooklyn. The food, the way people think, the accessibility to entertainment and restaurants. The events were really lacking. I was 31. I was still a kid.”

After moving to the city, Heit became a part of the committee that founded the Columbus Marathon in 1980. In 1991, Heit and his colleague, Linda Meeks, established Meeks Heit Publishing Company, which became a leading K-12 textbook publisher with more than 400 books.

“We wrote for some of the largest publishers and developed college books on different health topics,” he says. In 1999, he and Linda Meeks sold the company to Tribune Publishing (now known as tronc). From there, it was sold to McGraw-Hill Companies. “In some respects, we’ve been responsible for educating millions of boys and girls around the world and encouraging them to lead healthy lifestyles.”

In 2003, just a little over 20 years after the establishment of the Columbus Marathon, Heit began to suffer knee pain that required him to resort to walking.

“I went to walking when 100 miles a week began to take its toll,” he says.

And that’s now the New Albany Walking Club was born.

“It evolved from me just walking by myself, to having people walk with me, to becoming a little more formal and turning into a club,” Heit says. “From there came (the New Albany Walking Classic), and then Healthy New Albany.”

Now in its 12th year, the Walking Classic is the largest walking-only race in the United States. It draws everyone from professional athletes to recreational walkers who are just looking to stay in shape.

Heit says he’s frequently asked if he expected something so huge to come from a simple activity he participated in on his own. His answer? Yes, he did.

“I like to dream,” he says. “So, once in a while, I do follow up on my dreams.”

The city of New Albany, he says, has turned out to be “a very special place” that’s filled with opportunity.

“If you want to become involved, the opportunities are there,” he says. “I just wanted to contribute as much as I could. I started to get really involved, and the spark was walking.”

Living in New Albany has also encouraged Heit to carry on the healthy lifestyle he’s had since he was a boy. While he admits he could follow a more nutritious diet, Heit says he has always been active.

“It still important for me to be active and, hopefully, I pass that on to my children and grandchildren,” he says.

One of his daughters started her own personal chef business that focuses on vegetarian cooking. His other daughter ran a marathon with him. So, it would seem, Heit’s legacy is continuing on.  

Hannah Bealer is an editor. Feedback welcome at hbealer@cityscenecolumbus.com.

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