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For the first time in its history, the Winchester Foundation for Educational Excellence (WFEE) dedicated its annual road race to a person, thanks to the urging of three Winchester High School students and their civics project.
Jack McCarthy, along with fellow sophomores Gabriella Fantini and Zoe Maclin, and junior Sharanya Mukherjee, focused their project on a way of honoring Bobbi Gibb, the first woman to run the Boston Marathon.
Students said they brainstormed possibly starting a road race named after Gibb or re-naming the McCall Middle School track for her. But finding out WFEE already held a road race during Town Day made the decision easier and students reached out.
WFEE’s Board of Directors agreed to the request and on June 7 of this year, Gibb was the guest of honor at the road race.
WFEE Executive Director Maggie Vande Vrede said last month that about 668 runners of all ages had signed up for the event, making it the most people running in recent years.
Vande Vrede added it was great to have Gibb herself on hand for the race.
“She was so kind and thoughtful,” she said. “It was so great to have her there.”
WHS English teacher Roisin O’Brien, who worked with the students to contact Gibb, said having her in Winchester was special.
“This was big for our town,” O’Brien said during Town Day. “What makes it more special is her memories of growing up in Winchester.”
Winchester News recently reached out to Gibb and asked her about the road race and what it was like to be back in her hometown. This is what she had to say, in her own words:
“I’m so grateful for the invitation to join you and all the amazing people of all ages who were there at the Winchester Hometown Race on June 7th, 6/7/2025..
“It was so lovely to return to my home town, to meet so many wonderful people, and to find again the gentle sense of community still thriving in the Winchester I love and remember so vividly.
“It was truly a moving experience.
“You ask me why I run.
“Ever since childhood I’ve loved to run. It’s a joyful sense of running at top speed down the beach or running through the woods or along a city street. I feel free when I run. I feel the joy of existence flowing through me when I run.
“To me, existence itself is a miracle that comes from an incomprehensibly vast love that is beyond our understanding. Every every tiny detail is made with such exquisite care, it has to be coming from love — not from hate or fear — but from Love.
“Our job as human beings is to align ourselves with that Love.
“I first saw the Boston Marathon in 1964. I fell in love with the marathon as a celebration of life, shared with other people.
“The major part of my training was a journey across our entire beautiful country, meeting remarkable people, running in a different place each day, and at night sleeping out under the stars as a way of celebrating the miracle of existence, reaffirming my fundamental faith in people, and feeling the Love out of which this miraculous existence is continuously manifesting.
“I have faith in the American people. I have faith in all people, that we can build a flourishing, healthy peaceful prosperous world together
“Ordinary people are extraordinary, whether given credit or not.
“There is a fundamental unity of the physical and the spiritual as one indivisible and natural wholeness of being.
“Running to me, brings home this fundamental unity of the physical and the spiritual, as that which embodies each of our own individual beings and embodies the reality of the universe in its fundamental being.
“In this sense, running brings me closer to the sacred wholeness of being. Running brings me a sense of freedom and an expanded sense of being alive.
“It is wonderful to return to my hometown and find this community of loving, caring people still thriving here! It is a great pleasure, privilege and honor to have been part of Winchester Town Day! Thank you to all of you wonderful, amazing people of Winchester.
“Much Appreciation,
“Bobbi Gibb
“First Woman to run the Boston Marathon 1966, and First Woman to Finish in 1966, 1967 and 1968.”
