Pete Thompson has done everything for the past 49 years to make sure he’s in downtown Spokane on the first Sunday in May.

That includes special permission to leave his Air National Guard drill weekends and leaving his daughter’s baptismal party early. One year, one of his doctors even pushed him through the route in a wheelchair after he broke his leg and had a rod and 15 screws holding it together.

“I juggled things around to do it,” he said. “It’s just been on my calendar.”

His one regret is no longer having the T-shirt from the inaugural Bloomsday run in 1977. He loaned it out for a display and never got it back.

“That’s the last time I ever saw it,” he said. “The first one was my favorite of all of them, because it was so simple.”

Thompson was a casual runner in 1977 when a neighb

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