When thousands of runners stream past the announcer's platform at the Credit Union Cherry Blossom 10 Mile in West Potomac Park, Event Director Phil Stewart takes a 30-second time out. "I try to take a moment-before someone calls me on the radio with something that needs to be addressed-to savor what the entire race committee, volunteers, and sponsors have created," Stewart says. "I realize that I am in a special position to be able to say that I have brought happiness and a sense of achievement to some 10,000 people for an hour or so one April morning of their lives. In the scheme of things, that is quite satisfying."

Stewart's own journey started in the fall of 1966 when he went out for the cross-country team as a junior at Washington's Woodrow Wilson High School. He enjoyed more success at running than at tennis, his father's sport, and in the spring of his senior year placed second in the mile at the Washington, DC city championships with a time of 4:31.4 which stood as the school record for twenty years. He continued his running career while attending Carleton College, a small liberal arts college in Minnesota, where he was captain of the cross-country team.

Stewart's organizing skills were honed when he returned to Washington for the summers while in college. He worked for the National Park Service's "Summer in the Parks" program at Fort Reno Park where he staged rock concerts. "Our biggest 'name' was Nils Lofgren, who later went on to be a member of Bruce Springsteen's "E Street Band," Stewart recalls.

Both of these skills might have remained unrelated had it not been for an incident at a DC Road Runners event the summer after Stewart graduated from college. While running near the front of the pack in a six mile race in Annandale, VA on one of Washington's hot, humid August evenings, he became disoriented and eventually collapsed from heat exhaustion just 200 yards from the finish line. DCRRC President Gar Williams scooped Stewart up and accompanied him to the hospital. "His treatment of me in that incident made me want to give something back to the running community," Stewart said.

Throughout the 1970s Stewart's competitive running career flourished and he became more and more involved in the operation of the DCRRC. Running with the "hard core" runners in the Washington Sports Club (the precursor of the Washington Running Club), he steadily lowered his times until he reached his greatest accomplishment of qualifying for the 1976 Olympic Marathon Trials with a 2:19:58 for 22nd place at the 1975 Boston Marathon. "I still own the single age-24 U.S. record for the two- hour track run," Stewart says with amusement, "although I don't think the event has been run officially since about the time I set it." (He covered an impressive 21 miles, 1535 yards in two hours). During this time he started a lifelong friendship with Jeff Darman, who succeeded Gar Williams as DCRRC president. When Darman became RRCA President in 1976, Stewart was tapped by Darman to be his Vice President for Administration.

In one of Stewart's earliest race directing experiences, he found himself surrounded by six police cruisers after finishing up marking a course with flour for a race around the Tidal Basin. It turns out the police had received a report that a suspicious individual was putting down gunpowder in preparation for blowing up the 14th Street Bridge. A valid National Park Service permit got Stewart off the hook.

Opportunity struck next for Stewart in late 1976 when another running buddy, Ed Ayres, approached him about helping out with a fledgling new running magazine called "Running Times." "Ed needed a couple of basically unemployed or underemployed runners to help make his vision go. I was available along with Rick Platt of Williamsburg, VA, whom Ed had taught in high school. We used to paste up the magazine at an old print shop owned by a friend of Ed's and bundle the issues for bulk mailing on the floor of Ed's home in Adams Morgan."

Stewart's running and journalism careers joined forces most notably in 1979 when he entered a 10K race in Catoctin, MD where it was rumored that President Jimmy Carter would be running. Armed with an official bib number and a camera, Stewart snapped a half a dozen photographs of Carter's collapse. The photos became famous worldwide when they appeared in Sports Illustrated, Time and People magazines. They were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and received an Honorable Mention in the White House Press Photographer's "Pictures of the Year" competition. Once again Darman was there and became his "agent on the spot" for negotiating the sale of the photos for a handsome fee.

"Then and now, I felt sorry for Carter," Stewart reflects today. "I don't think there has been a harder working, more honest individual in the White House in my lifetime. I was told at the time that the photo captured 'The Collapse of the Carter Presidency.' That was not what he deserved."

Stewart would run the Nike Cherry Blossom for the last time a year later. By 1981 he joined the race committee as the race announcer. About the same time, he began to oversee a spin-off newsletter for race directors created by Running Times called "Road Race Management." With his competitive running career halted by a pelvic stress fracture, Stewart's careers on the organizing and journalism ends were gathering momentum as 1980s progressed.

"It's apparent that one has to be a bit of jack-of-all trades in this business," Stewart says. "I would have to say that I am a generalist, which is fun in a city where so many people get narrowly focused on a single issue or project."

In the mid-1980s, Stewart left Running Times, taking Road Race Management with him. He soon added an annual Directory and a race directors meeting and trade exhibit to RRM's activities. In 1986 and 1988 his two children, Mark and Anna, arrived, and by 1991 he became the sole director of the Cherry Blossom in its first year of sponsorship by Northern Telecom, the Canadian telecommunications giant. "These were busy, busy times," he recounts today.

"Although work gets pretty all encompassing, especially as race day approaches, it has been extremely satisfying to work at home as my kids have been growing up. Even after all these years, I still find it difficult the answer the number one question in Washington - 'What do you do?'"

Today, Stewart oversees the activities of a 30-member race committee, deals with sponsors, municipal authorities, vendors, and, ultimately, 10,000 runners as the Credit Union Cherry Blossom has emerged as the biggest of all of his hats. "We try to have fun and still do a first class job organizing this event," Stewart says. One of the traditions of each committee meeting is the random awards that Stewart pulls from his basement and his travels throughout the running world. Recent items included luggage tags, a stuffed animal, a backpack from the recent USATF convention, along with a few "good" prizes such as gift certificates to a local running store.

"Phil is primarily motivated by what he believes is best for the sport. No question about it, he will make personal sacrifices to a fault, to help people or events," states Jeff Darman when looking back over their long affiliation.

The saying goes, "behind every good man . . .", and for Stewart it is his wife Charlotte, and children Mark and Anna, now 18 and 16 respectively. The life of a race director tends more towards "24/7" than "9-5." However, the lifestyle has its advantages as well. "The job has given me a priceless opportunity to be at home as my kids have grown up. Perhaps more than anything, I want my kids to know me and I want to be able to look back and say that I know them," Stewart says. Mark, who is taking a year off before following in his dad's footsteps to Carleton College, joined the race committee for the 2005 race and Anna is set to sing the National Anthem before the 2006 race.

Each year the race presents new challenges and Stewart's vision for the future is simple: "I want our event to continue to live up to its reputation as 'The Runner's Rite of Spring.'" He is uniquely qualified to know.