John Ferrell (Buck) Fannin, a longtime Jacksonville lawyer who founded the Gate River Run and helped build the event into the traditional centerpiece of the First Coast running tradition, died on Aug. 18 at age 85.
His son, Richard Fannin, confirmed his passing to the Times-Union.
Born in Jacksonville and raised in Tampa, he studied at the University of Florida and became editor-in-chief of the Florida Law Review in 1967 on his way to his law degree. He returned to Northeast Florida, practicing here for a span of a half-century before his 2018 retirement from Fisher, Tousey, Leas and Ball. Later in his life, he completed a master’s degree in history from the University of North Florida.
Yet alongside his professional achievements, thousands of Jacksonville residents knew him most as a founder and the first race director of the River Run 15,000, the 15-kilometer race through Downtown, San Marco and St. Nicholas now known as the Gate River Run.
“I see people from time to time that say that race changed their lives, that say it got them into being active,” Fannin said in a 2017 Times-Union feature on the race’s 40th year. “It was great fun, and I think we got something started around here that has perpetuated.”
As president of the Jacksonville Track Club in the late 1970s, and as an avid runner who ran the New York and Boston Marathons, he spearheaded the push to bring elite distance running to Jacksonville.
“He was blown away [in New York] by the experience of running over the bridges and through the city,” said Richard Fannin, who was 10 years old at the inaugural race and later served for a decade as the event’s elite athlete coordinator. “He was a dreamer, and he had the vision.”
Buck Fannin not only handled many of the formidable logistical challenges of Jacksonville’s first 15K on April 1, 1978, but also secured the participation of eventual race winner Bill Rodgers, among the premier American distance runners of the era.
He mapped out the initial race course, which at the time began on Coast Line Drive, driving the route in a 1977 Toyota Celica. He also helped coordinate many of the complex behind-the-scenes tasks: purchasing a full-page advertisement in Runner’s World magazine, setting up a post office box to receive entries by the hundreds, arranging road closures through the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office and negotiating a one-hour suspension of rail service with Florida East Coast Railroad and Seaboard Coast Line to enable runners to traverse the course.
Despite unseasonably warm weather that soared into the upper 70s, the run succeeded, and endured. Nearly half a century later, the race that Fannin helped launch is still going strong, on schedule to celebrate its 50th edition in 2027.
He is survived by two sisters, three children, 10 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
A celebration of life is scheduled for 10 a.m. Monday, Aug. 25, at Legacy Lodge, Hardage-Giddens Oaklawn Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, his family requests donations to the Jacksonville Humane Society, First Coast No More Homeless Pets or Lakewood Church of Jacksonville’s Jake’s Place playground.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: John F. (Buck) Fannin dies: Jacksonville lawyer founded Gate River Run
Reporting by Clayton Freeman, Jacksonville Florida Times-Union / Florida Times-Union
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