John L. Parker Jr. (born 1947) is an American writer and the author of the cult classic novel Once A Runner and the more recently published Again to Carthage and Racing the Rain.
Thirty years later Parker follows the career of Cassidy in a second book Again to Carthage, published in late 2007.
In "Once a Runner" Cassidy is a college athlete who is suspended from school and prohibited from competing in his university's track meets.
Parker himself was a tall, lean runner in college, standing 6'4" and weighing about 162 pounds, with a best time of 4:06 for the mile.
While enrolled he was a runner on the Florida Gators track and field team, under head coach Jimmy Carnes, setting the school record in the mile and winning the Southeastern Conference (SEC) championship in the mile run three times before graduating in 1970.
[3] He then remained in Gainesville to get his Juris Doctor degree, and continued to run competitively for the Florida Track Club.
In the early- to mid-1970s, Gainesville was the Mecca of East Coast distance running because of the Florida Track Club (FTC) and its trio of 1972 Olympians: Frank Shorter, Jack Bacheler and Jeff Galloway.
He grows nostalgic for the scent of "the pepper and earthy decay of Spanish moss and North Florida piney forest."
In a December 23, 2007 interview with The Gainesville Sun newspaper, Parker told Sun staff reporter Amy Reinink that he stayed in town to attend law school after getting his undergraduate degree, and like Cassidy, he moved to South Florida after graduation.
[1] For Parker, the move in 1972 was to take an investigative reporting job at the Palm Beach Post, which he left after a few years to open his own legal practice in South Florida.