George A. Sheehan Biography Quotes 7 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
George A. Sheehan was born in 1918 in New York and grew into adulthood in a family where medicine and public service were part of daily life. His father, also named George Sheehan, was a physician and an early model of the healer's calling, shaping the younger Sheehan's sense of vocation and duty. A gifted student with broad humanistic interests, he studied at Manhattan College and continued on to Georgetown University School of Medicine, pairing a rigorous scientific training with a lifelong habit of reading philosophy and literature. This blend of science and the humanities later became the signature of his voice as a writer.

Physician and Family Man
After medical school, Sheehan practiced cardiology in New Jersey, joining and then helping to lead a practice that served families along the Jersey Shore. He was the kind of clinician who wanted to know his patients as people, attentive to the way daily habits, meaning, and stress shape the heart as surely as cholesterol and blood pressure do. At home, he and his wife, Mary Jane, built a large family; they raised twelve children, a household that constantly reminded him that health includes love, work, responsibility, and joy. The rhythms of clinic, hospital rounds, and family dinners grounded him long before he became widely known beyond medicine.

Rediscovering Running
Like many Americans of his generation, Sheehan ran as a schoolboy and then drifted from the sport as adult life took over. In his mid-forties he laced up again, first as a simple test of fitness, then as a daily rite. The return changed him. Running became his laboratory and his sanctuary, a place to examine the interplay of body and mind. He often said, we are each an experiment of one, summing up his philosophy that the individual must test, observe, and learn from personal experience. He trained methodically, raced frequently, and, remarkably, ran a sub-five-minute mile at age fifty, a feat that signaled both talent and disciplined curiosity. Masters competition gave him a fresh stage for self-discovery and a living example for patients, readers, and friends.

Writer and Public Voice
As the American running boom gathered momentum in the 1970s, Sheehan found a second vocation as a writer. He began publishing essays that braided clinical insight, personal narrative, and philosophical reflection. His columns appeared in local newspapers and reached a national audience in Runner's World, where editor Joe Henderson and founder Bob Anderson recognized the distinctiveness of his voice. The magazine's readers came to rely on him for more than training advice; he explored why we run and how the act of running illuminates life off the roads. Among colleagues and editors, including Henderson and later Amby Burfoot, he was appreciated as both a physician-writer and a mentor figure who could translate the spirit of the sport for newcomers.

In talks before races and at club gatherings he became a sought-after speaker, urging runners to cultivate attention, honesty, and playfulness in their daily miles. Elite athletes such as Bill Rodgers, Frank Shorter, and Joan Benoit Samuelson were part of the broader community that read and reflected on his essays during the same era, and many recreational runners felt that Sheehan put into words what they sensed but could not yet articulate.

Ideas and Books
Sheehan's books gave shape to a coherent philosophy of the active life. Titles such as Dr. Sheehan on Running, Running & Being, This Running Life, Personal Best, and Running to Win explored themes he returned to often: that play is not a frivolous escape but a primary human activity; that performance derives from self-knowledge more than from gadgets or gimmicks; and that health is not merely the absence of disease but the presence of purpose. He read and quoted widely, drawing on Thoreau, Emerson, and Kierkegaard, and used their ideas to illuminate the runner's solitude, the discipline of repetition, and the way freedom arises from commitment.

As a cardiologist, he could explain the heart in physiological terms; as a philosopher of daily life, he wanted readers to feel how a strong heart is also a moral and imaginative achievement. He did not preach a single method. Instead, he urged each runner to map an individual path, to test hypotheses, and to accept that progress includes setbacks. That combination of rigor and tolerance helped his work endure long after fads faded.

Community and Relationships
Beyond the page, Sheehan was a builder of community. Along the Jersey Shore he supported local races, advised clubs, and encouraged beginners. Patients found in him a doctor who would prescribe prudent training alongside medication, and runners found in him a friend who could discuss mile splits one moment and the examined life the next. Mary Jane and their children were constant presences at gatherings and races, and the bustle of a large family kept him humble and rooted. In the national scene he maintained collegial relationships with editors such as Joe Henderson and Amby Burfoot, and he enjoyed the camaraderie of the racing circuit where champions like Bill Rodgers and Frank Shorter mingled with midpack runners. That democratic mix was one of his joys: a sport where everyone lines up together, each with a private experiment underway.

Illness and Final Years
In the late years of his life, Sheehan faced prostate cancer. True to his credo, he confronted illness as another experiment of one, reporting honestly on fear, fatigue, and the rearrangement of priorities that serious disease imposes. He continued to write and speak when he could, distilling his experience into essays that later formed a reflective, candid final book, Going the Distance. The support of Mary Jane, their children, and a wide circle of friends sustained him, as did the practices he had cultivated on the road: patience, attention, and the daily choice to show up. He died in 1993, leaving behind a model of how an athlete's virtues can serve a person at life's end.

Legacy
George A. Sheehan's influence reaches far beyond the miles he logged or the races he ran. Physicians who value lifestyle and meaning as elements of care cite him as a precursor. Writers on sport and health point to his fusion of science and philosophy as a template. Recreational runners still pass along his books to beginners because he invites them to see running as a way to become more fully human. In New Jersey, a road race bearing his name celebrates the community he helped foster, and in magazines and clubs his aphorisms circulate, especially the reminder that every runner is an experiment of one. He is remembered as a doctor who listened, a father who cherished a bustling household, a thinker who read deeply, and a runner who turned the simplest motion into a guide for living.

Our collection contains 7 quotes who is written by George, under the main topics: Motivational - Wisdom - Success - Fitness - Reinvention.