What a trip down memory lane!
Roth was another name I was trying to remember. He did most of his track workouts at SMU with some of the others, like Bishop, Dan Lyons, Geoff Moore and those guys. They were all good regional runners, 2:17-2:22 marathon types.
Dallas was a fairly hot spot for running in the late 1970s and part of the 1980s. I just found this link which mentions a few of the major names from the area:
http://www.runnertriathletenews.com/features/fopsidebar_sept2002.html
The writer, Harry Hall, an Irving HS grad, was also a fixture in the Dallas running scene for decades.
Swiatocha often ran on his own, putting in a lot of miles of the type Lydiard's stable used to do. He was one of those guys you might call "untalented" by virtue of having to have a pack of rabid werewolves chasing him in order to break 60 for the quarter (come to think of it, I don't know if he ever did break 60), yet he trained himself to a 2:17:42 to win the White Rock marathon in 1985 and also finished 20th at NYC.
Novelli was the stud of the state of Texas while at cross country powerhouse Houston Strake Jesuit HS, running 4:10.2 for the mile and 9:04.6 for the 2M. I suppose you remember him taking it out in 4:24 at the 1975 Texas Relays and still being on pace to run 8:56 with half a lap remaining, then tying up horribly, wobbling and falling to the track three times in the last 150y. Marty Froelick, who had been nearly 100y in arrears with a lap remaining, ended up winning in 9:13.97 and won it the next year with a 9:03.10 (yards) in 84 degree weather (Froelick also ran 14:29.1 for 5,000m and 30:23.4 for 10,000m in high school). Novelli had a stellar career at Rice, with multiple SWC championships, All-American awards and a 13:36.90 PR. Did you know he had never run a road race in his life until his junior year of college? Almost every serious runner I knew had run the roads since their high school days. I saw Novelli when he came up from Houston for a non-running-related conference in Dallas and I talked him into running an around-the-lake race at White Rock (10.81 miles on the road, not the 9.33 miler on the trail), and he cruised to a 55:34 (5:08 pace) for an easy win in his first-ever road race. He stopped running competitively for awhile after college, but later moved to Dallas and made a brief comeback with a 2:19:20 marathon and some other good road races, then he got married and went into banking full-time, hanging up his running shoes. I think he went to Chicago after that, but I'm not sure.
Froelick, who took advantage of Novelli's misfortune in the Texas Relays, became his teammate at Rice and went on to an even better road career, running 47:51 for 10M and winning the Twin Cities marathon in 1987 with a PR of 2:10:59 (and had a second-best time of 2:11:14 at Houston).
Heffner also hailed from Richardson. He was a modest runner in high school, with a 4:27 mile PR. I remember seeing him at one of those summer all-comers meets at Richardson HS following his freshman year at Texas A&M. He was all excited after his big 2M PR, saying, "I ran a 9:25! I ran a 9:25!" Who'd have known then that he would run 2:10:55 to make the ill-fated 1980 Olympic team, as well as win a national championship at 25K? That shows what focus, faith, and smart, hard work can do. He believed all along he could run 2:10 and make the team, even when his PR was 2:23. He moved to Estes Park, logging monster mileage on the trails, and going down to Boulder to occasionally run with Frank Shorter and Herb Lindsey. His next three marathons each resulted in huge PRs: 2:18:27 at Nike OTC, 2:14:30 at White Rock (winning over the 2:14:51 from Fred Torneden, who would go on to run 2:11:35 himself) and the 2:10:55 at the OT. His max VO2 outdid Marino's as the highest tested at the Cooper Institute - 88.3.
I do remember Al Stewart and Reed Fischer having cross country battles both in Dallas and on TCU's old course. Fischer did run 4:05.7 for the mile for Jim Mouser at Highland Park HS, having to stave off injury problems from working out on HPHS's square cinder track, but I believe he was only 3rd at Golden West (the de facto high school national championship at the time). He ran sub-4:00 at UT. Legend has it that he once challenged the biggest guy in an Austin bar to a fight. When the guy shrugged him off, Fischer hurled a mug of beer in the guy's chest, then it was on. Fischer, not planning on being any more of a fool than that, never intended to square off with the guy, and sprinted out of the bar and down the street with the guy chasing him for a couple of blocks before giving up. When asked why he did it, Fischer said that he just wanted the thrill of outrunning the guy! I also remember him as a lifeguard at the University Park public swimming pool for a couple of summers.
I didn't know McKenzie had died, let alone in 1974. I could have sworn I saw him as late as 1989.
That CCCD 20M race at White Rock was on a cold, windy day, wasn't it? It was billed as some sort of regional AAU championship if I recall. Some North Texas guys and some SMU guys jumped in just for a long run. I ran a 20-miler in 1:52:43 on what I believe was that same course, but it wasn't in that race. Mine was several years later and in good weather.