Running for a resolution

Yet, a running community did develop in Green Bay. Understandably, it was a small close-knit fellowship that trained, raced and partied together. By the early '80s, many of its members were married couples who split up by gender to train in smaller groups either seriously or more casually and socially. One can imagine some of the women in the group running while talking about marital issues, raising children and their day-to-day hopes and fears.

Such private conversations shared between friends and athletes normally would not be of much interest to outsiders. But the secrets shared among these particular female runners - typical middle-class moms concerned about their weight but also their 10K times - becomes crucial information in Run at Destruction: A True Fatal Love Triangle, a new book written by Lynda Drews who was one of those runners.

One of Drews' training partners and her best friend, Pam Bulik, was emotionally distraught by her triathlete husband's ongoing affair with another married female runner. The man's brazen infidelity had sent shock waves through the couple's circle of runners and left his wife's closest friends, including Drews, unsure how to counsel her. When, on April 7, 1984, Pam is found dead under suspicious circumstances, the Buliks' running friends are further torn by suspicion and divided loyalties.

This was the point at which greater Green Bay took notice. The fatal love triangle referred to in the book's subtitle happened to ensnare three public school teachers and resulted in a sensational trial in which Bob Bulik was tried for killing Pam, his wife. The entire affair would put the city's nascent running community under a microscope.

Drews is clearly invested on a profoundly personal level in the story she retells. But the first-time author's initial thought, that her friend may have committed suicide, is replaced by a wavering belief that Bob Bulik killed her. The book becomes then something of a mission for Drews to understand Pam's death, 25 years later.

In the last months of her life, Pam turned to Drews as a confidant. But her friend's unending marital woes proved emotionally draining for the author and was taking time away from her own family and husband, Jim. It is after Pam's passing but before Bob's trial that Drews apologizes to Jim for this. Kindly and presciently, Jim responds, "We still don't have our lives back, and definitely won't, until Pam's death is resolved."

While Drews admitted in an e-mail to this reviewer that "the story did stay with me forever," she said she didn't start writing it until after she retired in 2004 from a 30-year career with IBM.

After taking several writing classes and workshops, Drews obviously poured much passion into the research she did for the book. The investigation, trial and aftermath, as well as the many personalities involved, are exhaustively but compellingly described. And as she smoothly switches from a firsthand narrator to a more detached fact-finder and back again, she manages to provide a fair and forthright accounting of a very painful chapter in her life and in the lives of many others.

As she tells this tragic story, Drews also sheds light on the running community's roots and subsequent blossoming. Evidence of the latter was abundant this past June 13 when a record 16,746 people laced up their shoes for the 33rd annual Bellin Run, making it one of the largest 10Ks in the country.

Jim Drews, an all-American cross country runner at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, was among a handful of runners who brought the Bellin Run into being in 1977. On her website, www.lyndadrews.com, Lynda Drews writes that 700 runners showed up "and within the top 40 runners, 20 were personal friends of Jim's and mine from college." The Drews hosted the post-run party, too.

At that first Bellin, Jim himself clocked an impressive 30:41 - just 10 seconds behind the winner, Olympic medalist Frank Shorter. The next year, Jim ran even faster, finishing in 29:56. But again it was only good for second place. Nineteen seconds earlier, another well-known runner, Bill Rodgers, won.

The fact that the characters in this true story are runners may be incidental. But the book reads like a fast-paced marathon, the end of which is never certain but is worth all the pain and emotion that gets you there.

Joel Patenaude is the editor of Silent Sports magazine.