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Michelle Gabel /The Post-StandardWALT AND PEG Price take a walk Thursday on Strathmore Drive. Price is a YMCA retiree and the founder of the Mountain Goat Run and Folksmarch. He turns 80 Monday.359 Months of! olksmorches359 MONTHS, FROM PAGE B-1Oswego before settling back in Syracuse in 1973. He retired in 1991, when he had the title of health maintenance director. The Prices have owned their house on Strathmore Drive since 1974.Walt says he got the idea for the Folksmarch while visiting Germany in 1981, where his daughter, a military wife, had just delivered the Prices’ first grandchild. He and Peg participated in the German version of the event, called “Volksmarche,” or “people’s march.”“We said we’ve got to bring that back, and we did,” said Walt.The first Syracuse-area Folksmarch, sponsored by the YMCA of Greater Syracuse, was Oct. 1, 1981, at Green Lakes State Park. Folksmarches are held every month, on Saturday and Sunday, at various locations in the area. Marches are leisurely, 5K (3.1 miles) and 10K (6.2 miles), over a course that Peg and Walt map out ahead of time. In the winter, some participants ski. There also are trips that Folksmarchers may take together.“We’ve been all over,” Walt says. “Europe, Yellowstone Park, the Grand Canyon ... the next one is to CapeMay (N.J.). In all those years since 1981 when it started, we’ve missed only one Sunday, in 1993, when the state police asked us to cancel because of the heavy snow. But we did the Saturday walk. That’s 359 months of Folksmarches.”Walks average about 300 people each weekend. At the 100th walk, at Green Lakes, there were 2,000, a record turnout.The most recent Folksmarch was last weekend in the Prices’ own neighborhood, in and around Onondaga Park and Hiawatha Lake. It got started Saturday with Walt playing the piano at a birthday party arranged by his children at Bellevue United Methodist Church.“I played the grand in the sanctuary and then we had cake,” Walt says.He was helped by drums and a guitar.He tells me he’s played the piano since he was about 7 years old, strictly in the pop-tune vein. (“I don’t relate to the classics,” he explains.) Walt is the regular pianist at the Prices’ church, Syracuse Alliance, on Midland Avenue, for the 8:15 a.m. service. He played a tune for me, “What a Wonderful World,” on the Steinway in hisliving room.In December 2001, ‘ ‘on a very cold day,” Walt was thrilled to be picked as a torchbearer for the Olympic Torch Relay in downtown Syracuse, before the Salt Lake City games. His children nominated him for the honor and bought the torch for him as a memento. It hangs on his sun porch.Walt leads a senior exercise class at the Y three days a week, which is followed by a game of volleyball and coffee. “We are a solid group of friends who look after each other,” he says. He and Peg try to walk in their neighborhood every day.A lifetime of exercise has taken its toll on Walt. He has replacement knees and a hip. He’s had stents placed in his chest after a heart attack, so has Peg, but they’re both doing fine.“I don’t race or ride a bike anymore and I don’t play racquetball the way I used to,” he says.All in all, Walt believes exercise served him well, along with “playing with my kids.” He says “the things I most enjoyed were when people had a good time.”Dick Case writes Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at 470-2254, or by e-mail, dcase@sy rac use. co m.
Newspaper Details
Syracuse Post Standard
Syracuse, New York, US
Sun, Apr 17, 2011
Page 154
Full Page
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Sarah K.
NA, 06 Feb 2024
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