SI Advance

Veteran race director Navarra is battling cancer, but still guiding Tunnel-to-Towers run

All the usual suspects will be there, clogging the E-Z Pass lanes for the start of the Tunnel-to-Towers Run.

The firemen. The Marines. The wounded warriors from Iraq and Afghanistan, some of them competing on prosthetic limbs. New Yorkers, and visitors from around the globe who -- for this one day, anyway -- feel like New Yorkers.

Then the horn -- from a fire truck, naturally -- will sound, and they'll start through the tunnel, following the path Siller took the day the hijackers flew the planes into the buildings, when he ran through the tunnel with 80 pounds of gear on his back, and got to the World Trade Center in time to give his life trying to save others.

Somehow, the race will go on, just the way Vic Navarra planned it, even if he's not there.

Because that's how he'd want it.

Isn't that what they always say, when somebody gets sick, or he dies, and his friends or teammates or colleagues go on playing the games, or singing the songs, or doing whatever it was they did when he was right there with them, making the whole thing run like a Swiss clock?

"It's what he'd want," everybody says.

The thing is, this time they're right.

Before the cancer slowed him down, making sure races went off on time, and without a hitch, was what Navarra did.

It still is.

If the Siller race is closer to his heart than some others, it's only because he knew the Sillers long before their brother became a symbol for all those heroes who lost their lives on Sept. 11, 2001.

And because before Navarra was a race director, he was a New York City fire lieutenant.

After years of running into fires when other people were running away, and running everywhere else just for the fun of it, some broken ribs suffered at a fire in Brooklyn turned him from a competitor to a volunteer at the 1981 New York City Marathon.

Navarra and his wife Joanne have been at it ever since, helping run races around the world. For 25 years, he's been the start coordinator at the Marathon, arranging food, shelter, and sanitation for 40,000 runners.

Compared to that, the Siller run is a walk in the park. Besides, Navarra always has half of Staten Island helping out.

The first time Stephen Siller's brothers and sisters took the idea of a race to city officials, not knowing what to expect -- because who was going to let them close down the tunnel and half of lower Manhattan? -- transportation commissioner Bob Ademenco jumped on board, just as soon as he stopped crying.

"You're going to need somebody who knows how to put on a race," Ademenco told them. "Let me call this retired fireman."

No way they could've known that retired fireman was going to be the same Vic Navarra who went to high school with Frank Siller.

So before they had a race, the Sillers had a race director.

"A godsend," Frank was saying the other day. "Vic is like family."

Which only makes it harder, now, watching the cancer chip away at Navarra, sapping his strength and stealing his sight, while they get ready for another race.

When Frank Siller says, "It's not gonna be easy," he's not talking about the logistics.

Navarra's always been the planner in the crowd. He's a detail guy, the one who'd be on his hands and knees at the start of the Marathon, measuring to make certain the wheelchair racers had a head start of 789 feet to compensate for differences later in the course -- not 788 feet, or 790.

And that there was a back-up howitzer in the parking lot, in case the starting gun failed.

Because we know that much, maybe we shouldn't be surprised that he's already planning for the next chapter in his life.

"My picture should be on the wall here," he was telling a friend on a recent visit to a funeral home, "under 'Coming Attractions.'"

Until then, Navarra's going full blast, or whatever passes for full blast these days, monitoring preparations for the Tunnel-to-Towers Run.

Because, hey, how would it look if he sat around doing nothing, waiting to die, and when race day came he was still alive?

"I don't want anybody to think I'm dogging it," he says. At the first planning meeting for this year's race, he gave a 40-minute presentation, spelling out in detail what needed to be done, without notes.

Did we mention he's been blind for awhile now?

Nobody's certain if he'll be there on race day, although you can bet your rent money Navarra plans on being at the start, just like always.

He's day-to-day, as the football players like to say.

But with an attitude like that, his friends don't have much choice but to make this Tunnel-to-Towers Run as memorable as all the others.

Like everybody says at times like this, it's what Vic Navarra would want.

Not only that, he'd insist on it.