In 2002, my father chaired the 13th World Interhash — the biennial global gathering of Hash House Harriers, held that year in Goa. It was the first time India had hosted the event. Among everything else he produced for the gathering, my father wrote and laid out a souvenir magazine for the participants. One of the pieces in it was "Gispert Rediscovered," his account of the chance meeting in 1992 between Howard "Dances with Dogs" McKay, who owned a Hong Kong pub called The Wanch, and Simon Gispert — the son of A.S. Gispert, the founder of the Hash House Harriers. G, as he was known, was killed by a Japanese mortar during the defense of Singapore in February 1942, when his son Simon was only two. Fifty years later, Simon walked into a Hong Kong pub looking for a bartending job, and discovered — for the first time — that his father had founded a global running movement that spanned almost every country in the world.
The article is in my father's voice, with his characteristic wit and care, and it shows a side of him I want to make sure is preserved here. He didn't just run with the Hash. He kept its history. He tracked down G's gravestone in Brockley Cemetery in England, photographed it (and lost the photos), researched the Gispert family's strange pattern of violent deaths across three brothers and three continents, and wrote it all up in his usual style — equal parts deadpan reporting and quiet reverence for the community he had given decades of his life to.
Fourteen years later, in June 2016 — three months after my father's death — Harrier Magazine, the international travel and event publication of the global Hash community, reprinted the article as a tribute. They used his original layout from the Goa 2002 souvenir magazine, and added a closing page of their own: a photograph of him at Brockley Cemetery, sitting beside Gispert's marker in a polo covered with patches from a lifetime of runs; the Digit Forever memorial T-shirt designed by his Hash community after his death; and the design for the Digit's Memorial Run held by the Hyderabad Hash House Harriers on April 3, 2016, exactly one month after he died. The run T-shirt is titled H4's First Family, with cartoon caricatures of all of us — my mother Elena, my brother John, my sister Rachel, our dogs Samson and Delilah, my father, and me — gathered around the design. We were what he ran for.
The article that follows is his, as it appeared in 2002 and again in 2016. Read it the way he would have wanted it read — with a beer in hand and an eye for the funny part.
"Gispert Rediscovered" was originally written and laid out by Eric "Digit" McGaw for the souvenir magazine of Interhash Goa 2002 — the 13th World Interhash, which he chaired. It was reprinted in Harrier Magazine, June 2016 issue (pages 52–56), as a tribute following his passing on March 3, 2016. The closing memorial page was assembled by Harrier's editors.
