Meet the SWFTR Officers and Dignitaries
Marathon
runner Roger Unruh
is the current President
of SWFTR and lives in Garden City,
KS. Patrick Nath
is the most recent SWFTR Vice
President (an office currently open) and is
likewise from Garden City, KS. The SWFTR
Secretary and Newsletter Editor is
Walter Birney of Copeland, KS,
who also has set road race records
at both the state and national levels.
The SWFTR Treasurer is fleet-footed
Wes Allred from
Garden City. The club's Publicity Director
is Kathy Hanks of Garden City. Additional
members of the Executive Council include
Tina
Dodson of Meade, Joyce Unruh of Garden
City, and
Emery Swagerty of Liberal/Hugoton. Walter
Birney and Patrick Nath also serve the
club as co-chaplains.
SWFTR is
also proud to claim 1952 & 1956
Olympian
W. Thane Baker as an Honorary Member.
The former Kansas State University
Wildcat athlete won gold, silver, and bronze
medals in the 1956 Olympics in
Melbourne, Australia to complement the silver
he earned at Helsinki, Finland in the
1952 Games. Now living in the Dallas,
TX area, Baker grew up in the SW
Kansas towns of Rolla and Elkhart. Baker
has helped in fundraising for scholarships
awarded to seniors from both high schools.
The Cunningham/Baker Scholarships are also
named for Elkhart native son and former
University of Kansas Jayhawk
athlete Glenn
Cunningham, a fellow Olympian as well
as a former world record holder in
the mile run. Cunningham, now deceased,
and Baker also lent their names to
a road race event sponsored by the
Elkhart Kiwanis to raise scholarship money.
Baker has attended this event every
year it's been held. Both Cunningham
and Baker are members of the
Kansas Sports Hall of Fame which
recently relocated from Abilene, KS to
Wichita, KS.
HOW TO CONTACT SWFTR
South West Fun Time Runners
c/o Walter Birney
Box 11
Copeland, KS 67837
(620) 668-5257
wbirney11@aol.com