Lorne Bartling, one of the founding members of Prairie Striders Running Club, was honored Saturday as the club’s Friend of Running.
Bartling, who died in 2009 at the age of 94, was represented by his son Dick and daughter Becki Bray, both of Sioux Falls, who received the plaque at the club’s Frostbite Frolic social run and potluck.
Bartling was 54 when he attended the first meeting of Prairie Striders on Sept. 12, 1969, in the basement of the Barn on the South Dakota State University campus. That also was the year he began running. By 1983, at age 68, he had logged 25,000 miles, enough to have run around the world, and achieved national age group rankings at various distances.
In 1981, he was ranked first nationally in the 60-64 age division in the one-hour run. Bartling, a Brookings native, covered 8 miles and 565 yards.
Bob Bartling, his brother, recalls, “Lorne was an excellent road racer. He always put his engineering degree to work when running a race. His sense of pace was the envy of his competitors.”
Bartling earned a degree in civil engineering from South Dakota State College in 1938 but after World War II joined his father in Bartling’s Furniture and Funeral business, continuing there until his retirement.
As a club member, he was active through 1985, serving as president in 1972-73. He also frequently presented the mileage awards at the annual meeting and chaired the nominating committee.
One of his other chores was working with Tom Bezdichek to place and pick up the 108 cones used in what was then called the Longest Day Marathon. It was a task that began at 4 a.m.
Bartling excelled in athletics throughout his life, being all-state and all-North Central Conference in basketball at the high school and college levels. He also claimed two South Dakota State Senior Golf titles, nine Brookings Country Club championships and three runner-up finishes in the South Dakota State Match Play golf tournament.
He was inducted into the South Dakota Golf Hall of Fame in 1985 and the Brookings High School Athletic Hall of Fame in 2007.
Bartling and his wife, Phyllis, had three daughters, Susan Hansen and Kathy Thompson, both of Dent, Minn., and Becki Bray of Sioux Falls; and a son, Dick, of Sioux Falls.
Past winners of the Friend of Running:
• 2007 – Bob Bartling, president of the original board of Prairie Striders when it was formed by then SDSU cross-country coach Jay Dirksen on Sept. 12, 1969.
• 2008 – Jay Dirksen, head cross country coach at the University of Nebraska from 1983 to 2011.
• 2009 – Scotty Roberts, director of the marathon in Brookings from 1981 to 2003.
• 2010 – Tom Bezdichek, president of the club from 1982 to 1990.
• 2011 – Matt Bien, president of the club from 2003 to 2009, Brookings Marathon race director 2007 to present.
• 2012 – Steve Britzman, director of the Hobo Day 5K since its founding in 1996 and the Arbor Day 5K since its founding in 1989.
• 2013 – Chuck Tiltrum, a Prairie Striders race director in the early 1990s and race course certification chairman for South Dakota during the 1990s through The Athletics Congress.
• 2014 – Reed Hart, an advocate of running and lifetime member who gifted the club with $20,000 from his estate.
• 2015 – Mary Bjerke, a vital part of the Brookings Marathon planning committee for more than a decade who also runs in or volunteers with other Prairie Striders races.
• 2016 – Shari Landmark, director of the “I’m Ready for Summer” Triathlon, long-time past director of the Jack 15 and president of Prairie Striders 2010-12.
Courtesy photo: Lorne Bartling, the 2017 Prairie Striders Friend of Running award winner, watches an SDSU cross country meet in 1974. He posthumously received the award Saturday at the Striders’ Frostbite Frolic.
