Keeping tabs on one of the largest gay sports teams in the world takes a lot of time and more than a little bit of patience. But Lee Abbey sloughs off his role as keeper of all FRNY directory and member data as a small price to pay for a seat in a club that has proven to be a family to him. “I enjoy working with computers and this was something I could do for the club,” he says, modestly. “One person doing this job, with no one having to worry about transitions each year or the information getting out of date was, I thought, important.” This spring, Abbey will, in fact, transition out of this role as women's vice president Katrina Amaro moves to a more automated Excel-based membership tracking protocol. Abbey, whose prodigious paper history of Front Runners is trumped only by his long and colored twenty-five-year-plus personal memory, will remain the club historian.

Unfortunately, there may be newer members reading now who could not pinpoint Lee Abbey amid the skein of venerable long-time club contributors who populate Rutgers every Saturday morning. Now, which is T.J. Storch, Ken Sherada, Donn Peppler, Lee Abbey? (All members could use a reminder to introduce themselves to folks they do not already know.) A regular at bagels, Abbey wears the adorably affable look of a favorite uncle, often donning slacks and a button-down along with his slightly oversized glasses. And, for the record, he looks nothing like ex-Pride run director and former member of the board Storch, seasoned Saturday morning walker Sherada, or Peppler, who beautifully edits and designs the FRNY newsletter.

Active with Front Runners since January 1980, Abbey represents a sort of living history of a club that proves the more things change, the more they stay the same. In the last quarter-plus century, the club has expanded and contracted, membership has blossomed and denuded and Front Runners at large has reinvented itself only to relive drama after drama with slightly altered cast of characters.

“The dynamics of large groups are difficult to deal with and often seem cliquish,” says Abbey. “Also, meeting the needs of fast runners and racers and the slow runners … these are issues that are never resolved and continually resurface.” And while Abbey remains purse-lipped about any gossip that lines the annals of FRNY history, rest assured that trysts, dalliances and all things untoward have also been on spin cycle since the club's inception.

A member of Gay People in Health Care looking for more gay friends, the still somewhat closeted Abbey came to his first club run after seeing a Front Runners ad in Christopher Street magazine. With some apprehension, Abbey met up with the group, which then had about a dozen members at any given run, outside Tavern on the Green. Abbey recalls that club founder and then president Malcolm Robinson was vocal about the group's presence and visibility, something that discomfited Abbey at that point in his coming out.

In those halcyon days, Front Runners could afford to be more impromptu organizationally. Members simply met at each other's apartments after the runs that sometimes went through Central Park but often meandered through more adventuresome locales like Coney Island, Prospect Park and Greenwich Village. “It did get kind of competitive,” Abbey says regarding who had hosting privileges, “so we finally started to go to various diners.” One popular post-run eating spot at that time was Spike Bar. An anomaly, to be sure, the group vexed the waitress, who could often be heard saying: “Gee, all you guys want is water. Maybe I should just bring over a hose.”

A self-proclaimed slow runner Abbey looked to runners in the club who were just a little bit faster than he was to find motivation. Guy Zelenak, who is now deceased but had been one of Abbey's closest friends in the club, conducted a series of running classes that greatly helped Abbey's running form and speed. Although Abbey found racing “exhilarating,” he, like many racers, became plagued by injuries, particularly in recent years. Abbey hopes to begin race walking in the not too distant future.

An integral club member from the get-go, Abbey eventually served on the FRNY board—as director-at-large from 1989-1991 (first under president Lenore Beaky and then Greg Valerie) and also as secretary after Zelenak became ill in 1991-1992. “Board meetings were often heated in those days,” Abbey says. “They were very long and dealt with all manner of things.” Popular topics included fundraising ideas for the depleted treasury, the team uniforms and methods of making new members feel welcomed. (Board members from throughout the years, please take a moment for a collective chuckle at the timelessness of these burning issues.)

In 1988, then-president Richard Walker asked Abbey to take on a role he would carry with him for the greater part of the next two decades: membership. At that point in time, Abbey mailed out the membership forms with labels that he got from Zelenak, who held the master membership list. “Each month would be a big production since we mailed up to 500 pieces,” he says. After Zelenak fell ill, Abbey took control of the master list because he had one of the only Apple IIs in the club and could, therefore, read Zelenak's disks. Every year Abbey would also take on the Herculean task of mailing everyone who had done the Pride Run in recent years and updating his databases after mail got returned. The task was rife with labeling, stuffing and data control minutiae. “People tried to help but sometimes short-circuiting the process gave unexpected results—the ones I was trying to avoid,” he says. “I got a reputation for being more of a control queen than I really am.” Pause. “I must admit that I do like to have things under control.”

Beaky light-heartedly describes Abbey as “very precise.” At times it could be unnerving to hear him dissect a recent run segment by segment to prove the distance was, in fact, 4.9 miles and not 5 miles. But Beaky relied on Abbey's eye for detail and his razor-sharp memory during her presidency. “He knew everybody in the club,” she says. “Whenever I had a question about who was this person, who was that person—Lee always knew.”

Abbey believes that the continuity, the data and the records are far more than a historical footprint of the club—they are its passageway to the future. And, in a way, so is Abbey. Given the increasing burden of personal and professional responsibilities, Abbey understands that a huge weight will be lifted with the more automated membership controls in place. But that is of little import when it comes to the bigger picture. “Front Runners is a constant,” he says, “a center to which I can return and feel at home.”

 

Random Data

Front Runner Lore? The longest board meetings were Steve Gerben, the shortest Jim Skofield

Movie Pics? Curse of the Golden Flower (a visual feast, dysfunctional family, palace intrigue) and before that The Queen (an interesting look at the British Royal family and their lives)

Provenance? Born in the Bronx, raised in Mount Vernon

Profession? Rheumatologist

Dream Job? Maybe a musician. Or a foreign language teacher – French or Chinese

Front Runner Memory? All the races, the parties…the Runettes, the Shangri-lezzies (both FRNY drag groups, gay male and lesbian, respectively)…