Being the 26th year of DFMC, I only recently heard how DFMC and the Barr Program began. Here's a
link to an article of the history and the first few paragraphs are pasted below. Please see the running.competitor.com article for the full history...
Boston Marathon champion-turned-coach Jack Fultz didn’t entirely
comprehend what he was getting involved with back in 1989.
Fultz,
who studied Business Finance at Georgetown University, was also a successful
collegiate track athlete for the Hoyas. Turning to the marathon once he completed
his NCAA eligibility, Fultz ran a blistering 2:11:17 (4th at Boston in 1978), two years after
winning the 1976 Boston Marathon in arduous 100-degree conditions,
affectionately nicknamed the “Run for the Hoses.” His marathoning career began
during his four-year Coast Guard stint prior to Georgetown.
Years later, as Fultz’s running career began to wane, he started
coaching. While he enjoyed mentoring both high school and adult marathon
runners, it wasn’t until Fultz agreed to coach his friend, Mike Silverstein, a
freshman at Harvard University, for the 1989 Boston Marathon, that he had a
notion of where this may all lead. He had no idea just how successful this
marathon fundraising enterprise would become.
Silverstein’s close friend, Seth Feldman, then a freshman at
Dartmouth College, had recently succumbed to the brain cancer that he battled
at Dana-Farber’s Jimmy Fund Clinic.
And from here, DFMC and the Barr Program were started!
http://running.competitor.com/2015/04/boston-marathon/dana-farber-and-jack-fultz-forerunners-of-marathon-charity_126233