Early retiree runs toward milestone

By David Mullen

After decades of approaching the bench, Scott Kline approaches a benchmark. Upon turning 50, the Preston Hollow attorney appealed to his fellow attorney wife Michele about leaving the profession and retiring to spend more time with their family.

“I wasn’t loving what I was doing as a lawyer anymore, and I kind of figured out that we could survive on a cutback income,” the softspoken Kline said. 

“My wife was still working part time as a lawyer. It worked out. We got to spend a lot of time with the kids when they were finishing high school and college and a lot of time with [youngest son] Andrew.”  

Kline is the proud papa of three children. Son Ryan, 30, a Greenhill School and Yale grad, is fluent in Chinese and a director of special projects for Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban. Daughter Emily, 27, is a Booker T. Washington and Duke graduate, an executive at SAS in Durham, N.C. and acts and sings opera. Andrew, 20, is currently on a long camping trip in the wilderness without — imagine this — cell phone service.

“My dad decided that he needed a project while I was in school,” said Andrew, a sophomore in journalism at SMU. “My dad runs the Katy Trail every day. But he is very modest, runs alone and doesn’t talk much about his running.”

As well-rounded as his children are, Kline was searching for his own diversion during his newfound downtime. “When I was 25, I was a law student in Boston.” By saying “in Boston,” Kline was being humble. He was a student at Harvard Law School.

“It was 1987. Most people that ran the Boston Marathon were not people that had run previous marathons. They were not elite qualifiers. If there were 5,000 who ran the race, 4,000 were just allowed to come out and run. In my case, the law school was given some bibs. So, I got a bib, got an entry and me and two friends trained as best we could. We went out and ran it and it was a fabulous experience. Our goal was not to walk … and to finish.”   

After graduating from Harvard, Kline moved to Dallas. A successful career in law and management followed, but his work and family responsibilities overruled his running regiment. With retirement on the horizon, Kline needed an interest. “At that point, two kids were in college and Andrew was in middle school and I discovered that I didn’t have any hobbies. I didn’t play golf, didn’t have any friends who were retired, and my wife was still working more than I was. 

“I’m turning 50, I ran a marathon 25 years ago, and I needed something to do for a few hours a day that is reasonably healthy that I can do by myself. So, I said, ‘I’ll try to run another marathon. It’s been 25 years, but I’ll do one more and see what happens.’” He signed up for the 2013 Dallas Marathon, which was canceled due to an ice storm. “As a result, I got on a plane, went to Las Vegas and ran the Hoover Dam Marathon. I wasn’t so thrilled with my time, so I decided to do another one and then another one.”     

After running marathons in nine different states, Kline heard about the 50 State Marathon Club, a loosely run organization of 5,000 runners with a primitive website that looks like it was designed in Mosaic 1.0. He dispassionately joined. 

“I wanted to see the country. My wife [Michele] grew up in New Jersey and worked in New York before she moved to Dallas. She’d been to California and been to Seattle but hadn’t been to the ‘flyover states.’ [Now retired, Michele] started traveling with me to all these races, especially the smalltown races, and we would go to towns like Manitowoc, Wis. that had a race with 100 people. We would get there, and it was like I was from Borneo. They were so happy that someone had flown all the way from Texas to run in their little race and support their charity.”      

Speaking from Alaska, Kline was preparing for marathon No. 47 in 47 different states. On Saturday, June 17, Kline runs the Anchorage Mayor’s Marathon. After Alaska is conquered, New Hampshire, Maine and Connecticut remain uncharted for the Marco Polo of marathoners. 

“I’ll be done on [Saturday] October 14. Getting down to these three states, there weren’t a lot of races so planning was difficult. I’m doing all three of those in a three-week period in September and October. I don’t know how I am going to do three marathons in three weeks — I’ve never done that before — but at that point I figure it is all about finishing.”

Kline said, “I’m a fairly cynical guy,” which is a statement that would be stricken from the record, “but everywhere I’ve gone, people have been incredibly welcoming and wonderful. I made a friend in West Virginia — state 42 — and he’s flying to Connecticut, a state where he’s never been, to run my last race with me.”     

Connecticut is not foreign to Kline. He completed his undergraduate work at Yale. “I think coming from San Antonio [Kline’s hometown], geographic diversity helped me get in. They said, ‘We don’t have anyone from there.’” 

While running marathons in 50 states has provided the impetus, Kline said meeting people along the way has been the true inspiration. “We try to have the same experience as everyone in the race. We stay at the race hotels, and we go to the expos.” In a country seemingly so divided, Kline said, 

“The people that we’ve met … it’s renewed my faith in humanity. People are really lovely if you get to meet them on their own terms. We’ve met lifelong friends along the way.”   

Now 60, in a few months Scott Kline is going to have to find another hobby, although a few European marathons may be in the future. “Honestly, I don’t even like running that much,” Kline said. “I’m looking forward to running much shorter races … or not at all. My wife asks me what I am going to do next all the time. She’s worried I am just going to hang around and bug her.”