Running down memory lane
In remembrance of a former friend, runner and teacher, Cedar Shoals High School hosted a memorial 5k for Joshua Sampson on Feb 4.
Starting bright and early at 8 a.m., 202 people gathered to run and walk down Cedar Shoals Drive and back. Many conversations and stories about Joshua Sampson were told and shared throughout the morning.
“One of the things I thought was really core to Josh as a human was that he would be in the background just sort of quietly doing things,” Stacy Sampson said. “He would show up if somebody needed his help moving, or using the gradebook, or with technology and even one time he fixed the toilet at Cedar.”
Joshua Sampson was an avid runner, a member of the Black Bag Race Series, and a helper in the Cedar and Athens community.
“Josh was my running partner, I always said ‘find somebody who gets you during a run, who can push you and drive you and when you want to stop they will make you go faster,’” Cleveland Miller said. “I had that, it was Josh. We trained for a ton of races together, we probably put well over 1,000 miles on the ground together.”
The creation of the race was a product of an ongoing joke that Joshua Sampson and Miller had.
“When Josh and I were running there was this one hill in Athens on River Drive and we’d run up it and I always used to joke that if one of us were to meet an untimely death that the other would have to create memorial 5k that the hill had to be a part of,” Miller said. “When Josh died I called Dustin and said ‘we have to do this, we have to do a 5k.’”
Although the original plan was to do the 5k on the hill, it was decided that a better place would be Cedar Shoals.
“Josh loved running and he loved Cedar Shoals and this was a good way to bring the two together,” said Dustin Shinholser, race director and owner of FleetFeet Athens.
The race is not a fundraiser. The price was kept low at $20 to ensure that there wasn’t a huge barrier for people to enter. There was also an option to run the race virtually, in which 30 people participated, from anywhere in the world.
“This is essentially a zero fund race, if there is anything over the cost, 50% of the proceeds will go to Project Safe,” Cleveland said. “Josh was huge with Project Safe.”
The other half of the proceeds will go to the Cedar general fund. The hope is that the 5k becomes an annual thing at Cedar.
“It’s a legacy and a celebration of his life where we all can come together,” Cedar teacher and runner, Beth Mendenall said. “It’s bittersweet because we’re thinking a lot about him but it’ll be an enduring legacy to run this race again and again.”
Joshua Sampson left many great marks on all those around him. The memorial race is a way for those stories and memories to be shared with everyone.
“He was a super quiet guy, not really one to toot his own horn. But I don’t think a lot of people realize how involved he was with things and how helpful he was and just how kind and honestly funny he was if you got to talk to him,” Shinholser said. “This is a way to preserve his memory and to make sure people don’t forget what a great guy he was.”
