Andrew Greif/The Oregonian

By Andrew Greif, The Oregonian/OregonLive

COOS BAY — Linda Prefontaine thought she’d never move back to her hometown.

But not only did she return to Coos Bay last year, she did something else even more unexpected: At 64, she bought a minivan and became a tour guide.

From May to October, she spends a few mornings a week waiting in a hotel parking lot outside her Honda Odyssey with satellite radio playing ’70s standards and a cooler of drinks tucked behind the driver’s seat, waiting for guests to arrive.

Over the next eight hours, she’ll drive them from bays to beaches, murals to a marina, gardens to a gravesite. This was not her retirement plan. But she’d contemplated moving home after her mother died in 2013, and after she informally showed a few Facebook friends the sights that were important to her brother during his childhood, a lightbulb went on. Would others be interested, too?

Yes.

Since her "Tour de Pre" began officially one year ago, fans of Steve Prefontaine have come from as far as New York, Florida and even the United Kingdom. One even called it "a top-10 day of my life."

Linda worked for more than 30 years in the timber industry in Eugene but considers herself a storyteller at heart. And there is quite a story to tell here: of a city that once boomed, a track that once roared and a barrel-chested brother two years her senior who was incandescent in life and remains America’s most iconic runner 43 years after his death.

The story is well known. Everyone at this weekend’s 44th Prefontaine Classic at Eugene’s Hayward Field -- the last edition of the meet before the stadium is torn down and rebuilt -- will know at least a piece of it.

Yet no one, Linda firmly believes, knows as much about or is as qualified to share it as she.

"We share the same DNA," she said.

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Mike Lloyd/The Oregonian, 1974

Steve Prefontaine glides past spectators at Portland's Memorial Coliseum in 1974 on his way to winning a two-mile indoor race in 8 minutes, 22.08 seconds.

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MORE THAN A TOUR

When Richard Koefod thinks of his childhood, it’s the pervasive doubt he remembers. But as a kid, he also remembers seeing a poster of Steve Prefontaine at a restaurant and being drawn to the runner who led from the front.

Koefod later ran distances in high school, too, but what attracted him to Prefontaine wasn’t that he once held every American record from 2,000 meters to 10,000 meters.

"It was his attitude of that ultra confidence," Koefod said. "It wasn’t so much about the running. It was about his spirit. There was something kind of magical."

Koefod remained a massive fan as he grew older — his email signature is a Prefontaine quote — and had long sought a way to pierce Prefontaine’s legend. He jumped at the chance to take the tour in May, driving from his home in Washington.

"I wanted to see the environment in which he grew up," he said, "because that would reveal a lot about who he was as a person. I’m still kind of on a high from it, and it’s been a couple weeks."

The "Tour de Pre," Linda said, is tailored for small groups and individuals like Koefod: outsiders to the area seeking an intimate backstory of "a guy with a good heart who came from a working-class family that taught him the rewards of working hard," she said. She reveals that portrait through the filter of Coos Bay, what she calls the "beautiful but tough little town" that shaped him. If all you know is his on-track swagger and instinct to play to Hayward's crowd, Linda details the kindness and work ethic passed down from their parents.

Linking her brother and her hometown works another way, too: With the timber and fishing industries withered, it’s no stretch that Prefontaine is the area’s most enduring and recognizable export. And through her brother’s cult of personality, Linda wants to shine a spotlight back on Coos Bay.

"That’s the other part of this tour," she said, stretching her arms at a viewpoint overlooking the Pacific Ocean on a warm, cloudless day. "Look at this amazing place."

Soon there will be a running camp, the "Pre Experience," and motivational speakers. These aren’t her first business ventures — her company, Prefontaine Productions, sells books and jewelry — but it is her most gratifying.

"The Tour de Pre is more than just showing people around," she said. "I don’t ever want it to turn into where I stand at the front of a bus with a microphone going ‘and as we pass Ninth and Elrod, that’s where we grew up.’ Could I make more money doing it that way? Probably. But it’s so insincere."

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[Quick facts: Stars converge for this weekend's Prefontaine Classic]

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Associated Press, 1972

Steve Prefontaine does a victory lap at Hayward Field in Eugene after winning the 1972 Olympic Trials 5,000 meters.

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She starts by asking guests to imagine the bayfront, now sleepy, as it was in her childhood, when it was the world’s largest lumber shipping port. There’s a plaque honoring Prefontaine off of the downtown’s boardwalk and, two blocks south on U.S. 101, a three-panel Pre mural finished last year that shows him in his Marshfield High School, University of Oregon and 1972 U.S. Olympic singlets.

For Linda the building-size, photorealistic murals are joyous and jarring. He deserves celebration, she said, for running clean and fighting the AAU to allow athletes to be compensated.

But other times she’s driving, or eating at the Italian restaurant across the highway, and — boom! — there he is, forever in his prime.

"It’s hard for me sometimes because I don’t look at him the same way that you look at him or somebody else looks at him or a kid in high school with big eyes looks at him," she said. "I look at him as just my brother.

"It’s impactful. It’s not just about seeing these, but sometimes it just sort of overtakes you."

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Andrew Greif | The Oregonian/OregonLive

Linda Prefontaine visits the gravesite of her brother at Sunset Memorial Park south of Coos Bay as part of her "Tour de Pre." She remains "amazed" that his cultural hold on track and field remains as strong as ever, 43 years after his death. "I think he would be really surprised and humbled," she said.

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SMILES AND TEARS

In a hillside full of flat headstones, Steve Prefontaine’s is one of few vertical chunks of marble at Sunset Memorial Park and Cemetery.

The original was flat, too, but about 15 years ago, the cemetery asked the family if it could install a more conspicuous marker to guide the visitors who trek to this manicured hillside tucked next to Isthmus Slough, a short drive south of Coos Bay. The traffic is heaviest in September around the Prefontaine Memorial Run, a 10k that last year attracted hundreds to a hilly course where Pre used to train. Runners have left shoes and watches displaying their times at the base of his headstone, with his profile in bronze alongside the Olympic rings.

To the left, parents Ray and Elfriede rest. In between, Linda notes, is her own plot.

She’s visited countless times since his death in Eugene on May 30, 1975, and some details will always stay vivid. Her parents had been with Steve at what became his final track meet just hours before his MGB flipped and crushed him.

"I remember when my mom called me before 5 o’clock in the morning and she couldn’t get it out," Linda said. "And I kept saying, ‘Is it dad? Is it dad?’"

Linda gives guests a choice whether to visit the cemetery. Her first, a college-aged son and his parents, wanted to go. The son’s brother had recently died in a car accident, and at the gravesite, the family retreated to give him and Linda space to talk.

"We did a lot of smile, cry, smile, cry, because it was just so meaningful," she said. "I could talk to him about it because I was 21 when my brother died. We’ll be forever connected."

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Rob Finch/The Oregonian, 2008

Elfriede Prefontaine and Linda Prefontaine, Steve's mother and sister, greet runners outside the family's home during the 2008 Prefontaine Memorial race in Coos Bay.

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THE GATEKEEPER

Though she has an older half-sister, Neta, Linda acts as the de facto gatekeeper to her brother. In the past, it mostly meant evaluating business propositions. As the copyright holder to his image and likeness, she has been pitched Prefontaine-related hats, T-shirts, fun runs, books, calendars and more. A former professional racquetball player, Linda managed this on the side of a high-stress job in Eugene's timber industry.

But in recent years, with social media’s explosion, she has fiercely protected her brother's legacy on a different front.

"It’s maddening, it’s frustrating" to her that on Facebook, some strangers message her claiming they were his old girlfriend. Distance-running contemporaries have criticized Steve's lead-from-the-front style. Others post quotes she’s never heard, claiming to be attributed to her brother. Some complain he shouldn’t be considered a role model due to the circumstances of his death. (Eugene police said at the time his blood-alcohol level was above the legal limit, but the blood draw was not done by standard procedure, Lane County’s medical examiner has said since. Linda has long been adamant she doesn’t believe he was drunk.)

Friends plead with her not to wade into arguments. Whether online or in person, however, Linda has no qualms confronting those she believes are twisting facts or ignoring them altogether.

"I think that anytime someone is attacking someone that you love and care about you just don’t keep your mouth shut," she said, driving to a fish and chips lunch at Charleston’s Portside restaurant. "Does it piss me off? Of course it does. It’s really frustrating because I look at the things my brother accomplished in his life in his short running career life, which was 10 years. Who’s done that in 10 years? Who?"

Dealing with that has left her suspicious of others’ intentions, and her circle of friends has cinched tighter. Sometimes she doesn’t introduce herself with her last name.

Creating the tour, then, and allowing fans closer access than ever to an intimate portrait of her brother and family — the picnics at Sunset Bay, Steve’s impatience at fishing — was not easy. But through her openness, she understands, comes power.

When guests leave her Odyssey, she knows they will have heard as true a story of Steve Prefontaine as she knows there to be.

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Andrew Greif | The Oregonian/OregonLive

The track at Coos Bay's Marshfield High School is named after Steve Prefontaine. The track was renovated in 2001 through a Nike grant.

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SHUT UP AND RUN

At Prefontaine Track at Marshfield High School, some tour guests run laps.

It was on a cinder oval here in 1969, his senior year at Marshfield, that Prefontaine tried to break 4 minutes in the mile in an attempt that caused a local stir. He came up short, but not before the coaches of Marshfield and Newport’s baseball teams, who were playing that night across Coos Bay at Mingus Park, agreed to forgo the final inning of their tie game in order to bus to the track to watch Pre run. They arrived still in uniform, recalled Mark Paczesniak, a senior on Marshfield’s team at the time.

At a break in the tour, Linda calls Ron Apling and puts him on speakerphone. Apling, a year younger than Prefontaine, remembers a winter workout as a sophomore when Pre and Marshfield teammate Tom Huggins paced him in his try to break five minutes in the mile.

Prefontaine, acting as a rabbit down the track's final straightaway, yelled at Apling to accelerate.

"I’m pushing it!" Apling said.

Prefontaine fired back: "Shut up and run!"

Apling dipped under 5 minutes. Whether or not it's connected to the story, Nike made a T-shirt with the same four words.

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Andrew Greif | The Oregonian/OregonLive

North of Coos Bay, visitors walk up the dune where Steve Prefontaine ran intervals alongside his teammates on Marshfield High School's cross country team.

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Andrew Greif | The Oregonian/OregonLive

Linda Prefontaine walks down to the water at Horsfall Beach. It is the last stop on her "Tour de Pre," an intimate trip she guides for paying guests who want to know more about her brother and the town he grew up in.

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'SPECIAL'

Linda ended Koefod’s tour as she does all of them. She drove her guest from Washington north out of Coos Bay and through neighboring North Bend on U.S. 101. They then headed west for the beach, and stopped at the sand dune where Marshfield’s distance runners used to trudge uphill for nearly a dozen intervals — after already running five miles.

From there, they drove to the end of the road, at Horsfall Beach, where Prefontaine ran the mileslong stretch of sand that juts into Coos Bay. Many on the tour take off running there, too, but Linda and Koefod walked close to the surf, where the sand is packed, and talked.

"You learn about his vulnerabilities and learn that he was a person with amazing spark but also someone with faults," Koefod said. "It makes him seem like someone who could have been your friend."

Linda likes hearing that.

That’s how she remembers him.

"My brother was special, and I’m not just saying that because he’s my brother," she said. "You have it or you don’t have it. He had it."

-- Andrew Greif

agreif@oregonian.com

@andrewgreif

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