Biography

Roberto Rosales Colon is a retired teacher and was an All American Marathon runner for Wichita State in 1973. He is now 75 years old young and still runs regularly. He graduated with his masters from Wichita in 1976 and from McPherson College in 1972. He taught a total of 25 years before he retired. He taught from Kindergarten all the way through college level. He spent his final 14 years teaching college courses and training teachers as bi-lingual educators. Roberto always wanted to teach from as early as he remembers. He wanted to share knowledge with others and especially enjoyed teaching children. He found teaching was his passion. He loves both learning and teaching and is considering completing the PhD he started many years ago at Wichita State in the next few years. Roberto says his key to success is persistence. He said he ran 48 or 49 marathons and only ever quit once. The one-time he quit was the first marathon he ran: The Boston Marathon. He said he tried to "keep up with those guys" in the top of the class of runners not realizing that, although he was good, they were the greats. As a result, his knees gave out at the 26th round. Still, it was a great race to run as it is the race where the first female ran (she snuck in) and he served as one of her shields. Roberto says his greatest achievement (other than being an All American marathon runner) was growing up in Spanish Harlem but never accepting any limits or labels to be placed on him as someone from a so-called ghetto. He vividly recalled telling one of his teachers, as a very young person, "I'm not from the ghetto, I am from New York City. Roberto supports local organizations for children and extremely poor members of his community directly.