Circle of Friends

Roy Saito needs two canes to walk, but his arthritic, 76-year-old legs can carry others for miles.

It happens every morning on the track at Jackie Robinson Stadium in the Crenshaw district. As Saito trudges around the track at a snail’s pace, he moves and inspires all who see him.

Saito’s determination as he sways from cane to cane to swing his legs forward keeps others devoted to their own dawn ritual of circling the track for exercise. “When you see how far Roy can go, it’s remarkable,” said Escott Nicholson, who credits Saito’s presence with inspiring him to stick to his walks on the occasional mornings he feels like quitting.

While acknowledging Saito’s achievement, Nicholson downplays some of his own remarkable details. Nicholson walks five miles a day. He is 80.

It’s like that at the track. Dozens show up every morning with religious dedication. They say their devotion is to themselves: to losing weight, fighting high blood pressure or following a doctor’s orders for their survival.

But after days, months, then years of passing on the track, learning everyone’s names, weights and ages, they begin to sustain each other.

Many scenes are amazing. There is Roy Saito’s slow, gutsy lap or two. There is Ruth Heckstall, 86, swinging her leg above her head in a warmup stretch.

Some are amusing, like the occasional romances that form along the way.

Perhaps most marvelous is the way a community has sprung, almost accidentally, from this 400-meter oval on the ground.

It began in 1984, when the dirt track in a park next to Dorsey High School was given a soft rubberized surface as part of the preparations for the 1984 Olympics. The attractive new track drew neighborhood walkers and runners. In the ritual of circling the track, strangers got to know each other. They started to talk, then became friends. The process continues with each new arrival.

“People begin by greeting each other. Then a few weeks go by, and you find yourself walking or running next to each other, and you talk. If you don’t introduce yourselves, you learn names from hearing others greeting people. Pretty much everyone knows each other,” said Antonia Routt, who has been running at the track for 14 years.

The random encounters unite those whose paths might not connect. “You meet people you never would have met had you not walked,” Nicholson said.

On any morning, one might find a judge, a gardener, a used car salesman, an airport skycap and a gospel record shop worker completing laps together, not to mention people of different races and ages.

Mouths and minds also get a workout. “Anything that comes along, we’ll talk about--the Laker game, O.J.--and people take sides,” said Jesse Dennis, 67.

Passions run high but never out of control. “Of course, it can get heated, but it never blows up. Sometimes someone will walk away, but that’s all part of it,” Dennis said.

Some say the most rewarding talks are personal. Don Henderson, 49, said he enjoyed conversations with other parents when his children were young. More recently, he advised a younger parent not to take a third part-time job, saying the extra money would not make up for lost time with his child. “This is our village,” Henderson said, referring to the African proverb. “It takes a village to raise a child.”

The bonds extend beyond the ritual of daily exercise. Birthdays are celebrated. There is an annual potluck. When a walker is ill, others check up on him. Those from the track also turn up at funerals when a regular dies.

Last month, when one regular walker arrived at his mother’s funeral in South Carolina, he saw a wreath from “the Track Pack.”

For many seniors, the track is a serene spot, a place to enjoy friends and the relative prosperity of their later years. When asked, some will share tales of fleeing early hardships in the segregated South, or of being forced from their homes in World War II because of their race.

As a teenager during the war, Saito avoided internment camps only by leaving school and agreeing to work as a sharecropper in Greeley, Colo. He worked as a gardener after returning to Los Angeles, until a bad fall on the job disabled him in 1993.

At the track, Saito speaks mainly of how fortunate he feels. “I’m lucky to be around,” he said. That feeling is reinforced at the track, where Saito, who is unable to pick himself up if he trips, has fallen four times. “It’s amazing. Somebody is always behind me to pick me up.”