Bobby Doyle

Indeed I heard that also this morning. That is a sad loss. A good guy, legend in RI, but also a great father, brother to Jimmy. This should not be happening to so many runners.

Heard the news myself. Sad, was a nice guy and hard worker. He had two sons, diddn't he?

so sorry to hear about it. Bobby was a tough SOB but a great guy. I googled him and read about his son who was in the hospital. Anyone know how he made out?

Bobby Doyle did pass away early this morning of a heart attack. This is a true tragedy for anyone whom he has ever met, the running community of RI, and the high school runners in the state (he was a coach at Woonsocket, RI)

His son Brendan, the State Trooper who was nearly killed a couple of months back, is making a miraculous recovery.

Bobby Doyle leaves behind his wife, sons Patrick, Brendan, Brian, Connor, and daughter Mackenzi.

I ask all of you to say a prayer for him, his family, for he was truely a great and tough man, who will be sorely missed.

Marathoner Bobby Doyle Dies of a Heart Attack

On the heels of launching a new road racing festival to be held next spring, the state of Rhode Island lost one of its best-ever marathon runners today, Bobby Doyle, who died of a heart attack, friends reported.

“This is heartbreaking,” wrote CVS Caremark Downtown 5-K race director, Charlie Breagy, in an e-mail message. “Terrible news for the Rhode Island running community.”

Doyle, a former All-American runner at Johnson & Wales University, was the winner of the first Ocean State Marathon in 1976, and went on to win the race six more times. He finished in the top-10 at the Boston Marathon three times, including a seventh place finish in 1979 in 2:14:04. Doyle also won the 1978 George Washington Birthday Marathon.

Ironically, next May’s new Cox Providence Rhode Races had been organized partially to benefit Doyle’s son Brendan, 26, a Rhode Island state trooper. The younger Doyle sustained a severe head injury when he was assaulted while off-duty by a motorist whom he had confronted for weaving dangerously in and out of traffic. The motorist punched him, causing him to fall backwards and strike his head. He was not expected to survive, according to a report in the Providence Journal. A former corrections officer has been charged with felony assault and reckless driving in the case.

In addition to his son, Bobby Doyle is survived by his wife, Lori. Other information surrounding his death is not yet available.

That is really sad news.

I used to run workouts with Bobby's group sometimes- Holly Johnson, Mick O'Shea, and some of the other Providence area runners who had joined the masters ranks. Often Bobby's kids would be there and join at least part of the workout. He was a tough runner and a great ambassador for the sport. I feel very sorry for his sons and his wife Lisa, especially given the other recent tragic event in his family. Any news about when/where a memorial service might take place?

ah, this is so sad. ah, Bobby. Oh, boy so young.

He and I won the Ocean State Marathon together numerous times.

He was the greatest guy. What a worker.

AM EST on Saturday, December 15, 2007

BY CAROLYN THORNTON

Journal Sports Writer

The running community has lost the most prolific marathoner ever to come out of Rhode Island.

Seven-time Ocean State Marathon winner and two-time U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials qualifier Robert “Bobby” Doyle, of Tiverton, died early yesterday morning after suffering an apparent heart attack, according to his older brother, Jimmy.

He was 58.

“Bobby truly defined long-distance running in Rhode Island,” said Don Allison, race director of the Amica Insurance Breakers Marathon in Newport, which this year honored Doyle by making him the honorary starter and grand marshal at the race. “When the running boom of the late 1970s was at its peak, Bobby emerged as a world-class marathoner, truly a source of pride for the Ocean State. He remained true to his roots throughout the decades, promoting and supporting the sport in his home state. He will be missed by all distance runners in the region, and remembered as the greatest marathon runner Rhode Island has ever produced.”

This is the second tragedy to strike the Doyle family this year. In June, Doyle’s son Brendan, a Rhode Island state trooper, suffered a near-fatal brain injury when he was punched and hit his head on the pavement outside a downtown club while attempting to subdue an allegedly reckless driver.

With family members, including his father, staging a bedside vigil, Trooper Doyle made a miraculous recovery and continues his dramatic comeback.

Jimmy Doyle said that his brother began having chest pains at about 6 a.m. yesterday. When the pain persisted, Bobby’s wife, Lori, began driving him to the hospital, at which point he went into cardiac arrest.

Lori Doyle immediately took her husband to the nearby North Tiverton Fire Station, where rescue personnel then took him to St. Anne’s Hospital in Fall River.

“We are all devastated,” said Jim Doyle, adding that he never went a day without talking to his brother, whether it be just to chat or to ask him training advice. “We are just in disbelief. It’s like a terrible dream.”

Living the early part of his childhood in Pawtucket before moving with his family to Providence, Doyle was an All-State cross-country runner and state record-holder on the track in the 2-mile, both indoor and outdoor, at Hope High School.

He went on to become an All-American cross-country runner at the University of Texas-El Paso, where in 1969 he led his team to the program’s first NCAA Division I Championship.

Doyle returned to Rhode Island shortly after graduating with a degree in biology and joined his brother in operating Doyle’s Sporting Goods in Pawtucket from 1972 to 1993. In recent years, he was a devoted stay-at-home dad.

Venturing into marathoning in 1975, Doyle won the inaugural Ocean State Marathon in Newport in 1976 and went on to win that race six more times — in 1977, 1978, 1982, 1984, 1985 and finally in 1990, at the age of 42.

He also competed in the Boston Marathon four times, finishing 15th or better in each attempt, running a personal best of 2 hours, 14 minutes, 4 seconds en route to a seventh-place finish in 1979. In his best finish at the famed race, Doyle placed fifth in 1985 with a time of 2:21:31.

Following that finish, he was invited to compete for the United States in the marathon at the Pan American Games.

He also ran in the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials in 1980 and ’84, clocking a time of 2:18 in his second trials attempt despite battling a painful pelvis injury.

But Doyle’s road racing accomplishments hardly stopped there.

“He ran so many races; sometimes he would win two races in one day,” said Jim Doyle, adding that his brother inspired him and countless others also to take up running. “He’d go to a 10K in the morning, then come back in the evening and win another 10K.”

A true student of the sport who never hesitated to share his knowledge, Doyle had been coaching high school track and cross-country runners since the early 1990s, for the first couple of years at La Salle Academy and then at Woonsocket High School ever since.

Doyle also used his stature in the running community to assist the fundraising efforts of numerous charities, including Special Olympics and the Rhode Island Chapter of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training program.

“Just about any organization that would ask Bobby to be at a race, he was there,” Jim Doyle said.

“ … He was always there to lend a helping hand.”

The son of Dorothy Doyle Dugdale and the late James Doyle, he is survived by his wife; four sons, Patrick, Brendan, Brian and Connor; and a daughter, Mackenzie. In addition to his brother, he leaves a sister, Peggy Darling Doyle. He was the former husband of Maureen Adams.

Funeral arrangements are being handled by the Manning-Heffern Funeral Home in Pawtucket. A funeral is scheduled for Tuesday at St. Joseph Church, 193 Wolcott St., Pawtucket

RIP, Bobby.

Tomorrow, I'll post an aticle about him that was in the July 1979 New England Running magazine.

Damn. RIP Bobby. 3 noteworthy runners gone this year within mere weeks of each other.

Bob was my high school coach. He was the first person that really showed me how to train properly. He was one of the nicest guys i ever met, from one of the nicest families i've known. I just saw him at the Breakers Marathon in October. He looked great and really seemed to be enjoying watching the younger guys run their marathon. He was always one of my favorite people to run into. The RI running community really lost a great one this week. We're all going to miss him.

Skylon,

I've been conversing back and forth with some of the top runners from the Bobby's era. I'd like to share an article BR forwarded to me.

I didn't know Bobby well, other than sharing the podium with him many times. What I did learn of him I'd like to share.

He was humble, shy I'd say. Soft spoken with a quiet quick wit. He was surprise at all the fuss over him for winning the Ocean State along with all the other races he won over the years. After all he was just doing what he was suppose to do...RUN! and ENJOY it!

Bobby's will to live to the fullest extend wasn't lost...it lives on...in his family through his son...and their prayers...Brendan.

God Bless Bobby Doyle!

PROVIDENCE — Bobby Doyle’s life changed with a late-night phone call.

Changed when he heard that his son, Brendan, 25, a Rhode Island state trooper, had been punched outside a downtown club and had hit his head on the pavement. Changed when he heard Brendan had been trying to stop a guy from driving his BMW convertible on the sidewalk, endangering people as they came out of the club.

“My son Patrick told me that Brendan had been critically injured and might not make it,” he said.

An hour later Doyle was at Rhode Island Hospital, where he was asked if his son was an organ donor.

He’s been at Rhode Island Hospital for nine days now, where his life has been reduced to waiting, waiting for things to happen that he can’t control.

Which is not without a certain irony.

For once upon a time, Doyle’s life was all about control, all about controlling his emotions, controlling pain, controlling his doubts, controlling the swirl of discomfort that is the distance runner’s constant opponent. Once upon a time, his world had all seemed so simple: Block out everything else and run the race the best he could.

And very few around here ever ran a distance race any better. For more than a decade, beginning back in the mid-’70s, Bobby Doyle was the premier Rhode Island runner, the kid who had grown up in a tenement on North Main Street in Providence and became a national runner, a three-time top-10 finisher in the Boston Marathon, winner of six Ocean State marathons, one of just two marathon runners representing the United States at the Pan American games. A kid who seemingly had come from nowhere to become an iconic Rhode Island sports figure.

“They used to pay me to run,” he said, “but I would have done it for nothing.”

That was what had defined him back then, a hunger, a hunger that he brought to his running and his career, the sense that he was going to will himself to be a great runner.

“I always wanted to be something in sports when I was a kid growing up,” he once said. “and I always was a nobody. Then I found something I was good at. So I went after it. Went after it like crazy.”

When he was done, he had run so very far from where he had started, had become something in sports that he never could have envisioned, a name everyone knew.

Patrick Doyle remembers being a little kid and going to races, and everyone knew who his father was. He remembers running as a little kid, and when he grew up he went to St. Ray’s, where he won the state title in the 3,000, the same race his father had won 30 years earlier.

“I ran because it was my calling,” said Patrick Doyle.

Brendan was three years younger, and he, too, was a runner. Second-team All-State at St. Ray’s. A good college runner at Iona.

The family game.

Bobby Doyle thinks that being a runner saved Brendan’s life. The fact he was in great shape. The fact his heart has been strengthened by all the innumerable hours of training. The fact his body is used to dealing with pain, dealing with discomfort, dealing with struggling on when most people would give up.

He remembers the time Brendan ran the Boston Marathon three years ago, a day with temperatures in the 90s, Brendan struggling in the oppressive heat. At one point Bobby ran with him for a quarter of a mile, knew he was in trouble, told him it was all right to stop.

“I’m all right,” Brendan told him. “I’m going all the way.”

It was last Thursday morning, and Bobby Doyle and his son Patrick were sitting outside Rhode Island Hospital, sitting in front of a small memorial for people who died on September 11, 2001.

“I came out here the first day,” he said, “and it seemed to settle me down. So when I feel I’m losing it, this is where I come. It gives me some peace.”

It’s not easy. He gets to the hospital about 6 in the morning, stays until about midnight, one of several who have kept up a vigil inside Brendan’s room. He says that Maureen Adams, his ex-wife and Brendan’s mother, sleeps in the room every night. Members of the State Police are always in and out, showing their support. Members of the Providence Fire Department who saved Brendan minutes after the incident have visited. Still, it’s a family’s nightmare, and in the first few days after the incident, when Brendan was still on the critical list, maybe the worst thing was the sense of powerlessness.

At least for Bobby Doyle, this man who was a self-professed nobody in sports until he all but willed himself to be a national runner.

Now he wills his son to survive, wills his son to one day get back to where he was nine days ago, back to where he tried to defuse a potentially dangerous situation on a downtown street and his world instantly changed.

So now he fights his grief the way he used to fight his pain when he ran.

A few hours earlier, Brendan Doyle had opened his eyes for the first time, had noticed the people in the room. It was a big step, a symbolic one.

Still, Bobby Doyle knows it’s going to be a long road, both for Brendan and the family, too. Knows that they are all in it for the long haul now, one that will test everyone’s resolve; one that will be about time and rehab, and prayer, too.

For Bobby Doyle is 58 now, and though it’s been 17 years since he last ran through the cheers, in so many ways running has been his life. From his sons running, to coaching the distance runners at Woonsocket High School, to the countless people who still remember him, Bobby Doyle is still the patron saint of the Rhode Island running world.

But he knows this is his toughest race, tougher than marathons, tougher than all those countless hours when his body hurt and he kept running through the pain, tougher than all those times when he wanted to quit and didn’t, tougher than all those times when he thought he couldn’t do it and did. All those lessons he once taught to his sons, even if he didn’t know he was teaching them.

And he knows he’s never been through anything more difficult than sitting in a hospital room, and the unfathomable sorrow of watching his son lying there fighting for his future.

“This is the most difficult thing I’ve ever been through,” says Bobby Doyle.

His toughest race.

“This is the most difficult thing I’ve ever been through.” Bobby Doyle

Bobby was a great man. I was luck enough to run for his brother in high school. At time Bobby would do workouts with us and it amazed me how much strength he had, and this was about 6 years ago. He will be missed.

Newspaper had the wrong date for the Bobby's funeral.

The correct date is Wednesday (tomorrow) Dec. 19th at St. Joseph's Church, 193 Walcott Street, Pawtucket, RI.