For race day, a survivor tells his story

For so long, when telling people why he has dedicated his career to the Broad Street Run, Jim Marino would tell his father's story.

How it was his father's battle with colon cancer, a disease that would eventually take his life, that motivated him to first volunteer on race day 32 years ago - the event benefitted the American Cancer Society, and he saw it as his way to help. How he went on to become the race's director, transformed it into a nationally recognized running event, and still gets the most satisfaction out of the money and awareness the run raises for cancer research.

Now, he will tell his own story.

How the very type of cancer research and prevention the race seeks to promote just might have saved his life. How, after an eight-month battle with pancreatic cancer, he is lucky enough to say he is cancer-free. How very blessed he feels that, come Sunday, he will be just where he loves to be: on Broad Street, on race day, methodically making sure it all goes off without a hitch.

"This one is special," he said. "I am happy to be here to do it."

Marino, 58, a father of two from Roxborough, is the type of civil servant who sees his job not as a paycheck, but as a calling.

"I don't know what we would do without him," said Leo Dignam, a former deputy commissioner of the Department of Parks and Recreation, who worked closely with Marino on the race for years, and is now an assistant managing director for the city. "He makes the thing go."

Never a runner, Marino's thing has always been making sure the race runs smoothly.

"I run the run," he says with a laugh.

To Marino, race day success is in the details. In the prerace dawn, he drives Broad Street, on the lookout for fresh potholes. At day's end, he picks up parking cones. With the help of the army of parks and rec volunteers, he does everything in between.

He travels the country studying races, and has built bonds with local running and student groups. He has grown the race from 5,600 runners in 1998 to over 40,000 last year, the largest 10-mile race - and the sixth largest race - in the nation. He has helped build an exciting event the city can enjoy and be proud of - one people travel to from across the country.

And along the way, he has worked hand in hand with organizations like the American Cancer Society to make sure the race is helping those who need it.

"He is the race to us," said Roy Kardon, a volunteer cochair of the American Cancer Society's DetermiNation group, which each year sponsors hundreds of Broad Street runners who raise money for cancer research. "He is always there for us, to help us, encourage us."

Doctors found the three growths on Marino's pancreas by chance three years ago during a CAT scan for an unrelated health issue. It was a stroke of luck that likely saved his life.

Because it spreads so rapidly and is rarely detected in its early stages, pancreatic cancer is often deadly.

In August, doctors at Jefferson told Marino that one of the tumors was malignant.

"You hear 'pancreatic' and you're scared to death," Marino said. "It's been so devastating to so many people and I thought I was going to be one of them."

In October, doctors removed a section of his pancreas, some lymph nodes, and his spleen.

Two days later, with his wife, Gerri, at his side in the recovery room, his surgeon told him the news. They had gotten all of it.

Marino asked his doctor if he could kiss him. And now, he tells his story, hoping perhaps it would cause someone else to get an early screening, to get lucky like him.

And the man who has helped build a race that helps others fight the battle he has now fought says a prayer of thanks when he thinks of what awaits Sunday. Of the goose bumps he knows he will feel at the starting line - at the site of 40,000 runners stretching down Broad Street, when it is just a matter of the air horn kicking it off.

Of how wonderful it will be. Of how glad he will be to be alive and here for it.

mnewall@phillynews.com215-854-2759