Getting a run for its money

His effort raised half the price of a new digital transmitter.
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR EDUCATION WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- "The first 30 miles was really a piece of cake," said Gary Sexton, reflecting on his 50-mile run to raise money for improvements to WYSU-FM Radio at Youngstown State University.
Sexton, the station director, said the next 12 miles of the North Country Trail Race seemed like a regular marathon.
"The last eight was pretty much just making it through it," he recalled.
WYSU is undergoing a $500,000 digitalization project to improve its signal, and Sexton hit upon the idea of running a 50-mile "ultra-marathon" as a fund-raiser to help secure money for a new $70,000 transmitter as part of that project.
He asked sponsors to back him for each mile completed and came away from the event with $35,000 in pledges. His smallest contribution was $1, his largest was $1,000. One check from a friend was made payable to him "dead or alive," a reference to the distance Sexton planned to run.
The Wean Foundation already had contributed $20,000 toward the new transmitter, leaving $15,000 yet to be raised.
"I was really pleased. I didn't know what to expect," Sexton said of his fund-raising success.
He also was pleased with his time on the Traverse City, Mich., course, completing the 50 miles in 8 hours, 44 minutes and 36 seconds.
It was a 25-mile loop that was very hilly, he said, noting that he finished ninth overall.
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Sexton has run in numerous marathons before ,and his wife, Sue, who also is a runner, went with him to the ultra-marathon to run a couple of 3-mile segments with him as encouragement.
Her last stretch was to be between miles 42 and 45, but Sexton said he "kind of begged her to run with me to the end."
She did, and it was a partner-building experience, Sexton said.
The station digitalization began in 2004, and most of the interior portion of the job is completed. Sexton said WYSU is looking for support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and others to finance the project's exterior portion.
The goal is to have the revamped station up and running by 2008, YSU's centennial year.
Sexton's effort to help the station didn't go unnoticed.
The YSU trustee board passed a resolution Tuesday congratulating him for "his remarkable achievement and his dedication" to the betterment of WYSU.
Sexton said he is considering trying the race again some day. "Not as a fund-raiser, just to do it," he said.
gwin@vindy.com