Heart
of America Marathon
Labor Day 
Columbia, Missouri
Bill Clark has been a part of the sports scene in Columbia for 45 years. He came to the city in 1954 as a student at the University of Missouri and has remained here since-- ¬
except for a few months in early 1958 when he was a sportswriter for the Lexinton (Ky.) Leader.He spent two decades covering local and regional sports for both the Columbia Missourian and the Columbia Tribune and has written extensively for numerous national and international baseball magazines.
Through more than four decades, he has been the force behind the origin and growth of the Heart of America Marathon, the Columbia Track Club, the National 100-Mile Walking Championship, the American Centurion Club, the Columbia Diamond Council, the Columbia Basketball Officials'
Association, the Columbia Bowling Hall of Fame, and the Hawthorn Native Plant Society. He spent 40 years as an official at the high school and college levels in 12 sports and is a member of the National Halls of Fame for powerlifting, weightlifting, and the all-rounds...as well as the national and international masters' lifting Halls of
Fame. He is also a member of the Midwest Scouts (baseball) Hall of Fame and the Columbia Bowling Hall of Fame. He currently holds more than 110 lifting records for
lifters 55-over. For 32 years, he has been a full-time baseball scout - the last seven as the international director for the Atlanta Braves.
Bill was the founder of the masters' program for both weightlifting and powerlifting and staged the first national championships for lifters 40-over in Columbia in 1975 at Columbia College. In 1986, he founded the International All-Round Weightlifting Association, one of three international sanctioning bodies for the weight sports.
The Heart of America Marathon ranks No.1 with Bill on this list of achievements. "The race was born in a time when no one ran marathons. It was a decade before its time. To convince someone to run 26 miles for the thrill of it had to be my finest hour," Clark says.
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