A strong work ethic was the driving force behind Bobby Doyle’s accomplishments in running.

Journal / Gretchen Ertl

Hollie Walton was a freshman at Hope High School in the mid-1960s when he first met Bobby Doyle.

Ted McLaughlin, Hope’s track and cross country coach at the time, instructed the lanky, wide-eyed teen to stick with Doyle, who was a senior, sending them out on a training run they called the “Pawtucket Loop.”

So Doyle headed off to Pawtucket with Walton in tow. When they arrived at the turnaround point, Walton turned to Doyle and said, “Where’s the car?”

“We’re the car,” Doyle said matter of factly, as he turned around and headed back to the high school.

“He just took off,” said Walton. “And I said to myself, ‘This guy’s nuts.’ ”

But Walton followed Doyle back to Hope that day. Several years later, he would also follow him to the University of Texas-El Paso. They would continue to run together long after their college days were over, and even when their years of competitive running came to an end, their lives remained intertwined.

That fall afternoon four decades ago marked the start of a deep and meaningful friendship between Walton and Doyle, a bond that most people can only wish for.

“He was like an older brother watching over me,” Walton said of Doyle, who died of an apparent heart attack on Friday morning at the age of 58. “He always protected me. I was the best man at his wedding. We talked every day. I loved that man, and I’m still shocked (at the news of Doyle’s death). A big part of my life is gone. I don’t know how I’m going to recuperate from this.”

Many others who knew Doyle echoed Walton’s sentiments throughout the day Friday as news spread throughout the running community about the death of the man who had come to represent Rhode Island’s shining symbol of running excellence during the 1970s.

“This is a blow to the running world. This is a blow to his family and all of his friends,” said Pat McNulty, who came to know Doyle when the two ran for McNulty’s father — John McNulty — on the Johnson & Wales Running Club. “He had the most guts of any person I know. His work ethic was second to none as it related to running, and that was evidenced by his performances in the Boston Marathon and all of his (marathon) wins in Newport.”

It was that work ethic that enabled Doyle to transform himself from “the small guy who was cut from all the sports teams” into one of the greatest runners to come out of Rhode Island.

“We’d go out for the basketball team and we’d be standing in line,” Doyle’s older brother Jim said, remembering their childhood days. “They’d look at me, the tall guy, and say, ‘Come over here.’ Then they’d say, ‘Bob, you’re too small.’ ”

But that didn’t deter Bobby Doyle. He’d just move on to another sport.

Jim Doyle says his brother made the hockey team because Bobby didn’t mind getting up for the 5 a.m. practices at the old Rhode Island Auditorium, which was just down the street from the Doyles’ North Main Street home. Bobby got to be the catcher on Hope’s baseball team, Jim Doyle says, because no one else wanted to be on the receiving end of hard-throwing Ray Jarvis, who went on to pitch for the Red Sox.

“He would take the toughest job because he just wanted to be part of the team,” Jim Doyle said. “Bobby wanted to show everybody he could excel at something.”

And, indeed, he soon would excel.

In his junior year, Doyle discovered what would become his true calling — running.

It started, according to Jim Doyle’s account, when McLaughlin told Bobby to run a mile as punishment for receiving detention.

Doyle would go on to earn All-State honors in cross country at Hope, then set state records on the track in the two-mile, both indoors and outdoors.

But those achievements were the beginning of a running rÉsumÉ that goes on seemingly forever, Doyle’s most notable accomplishments being the 1969 NCAA Division I Cross Country Championship at UTEP, his seven Ocean State Marathon victories, four top-15 performances at the Boston Marathon including a fifth place (1985) and a seventh (1979), a personal best of 2:14.4, two appearances at the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials and another at the Pan American Games.

But while Doyle’s success on the road-racing circuit was impressive, what he did when he wasn’t off winning races is what his friends and fellow runners remember most. As fierce of a competitor as Doyle was, he was more than willing to share his knowledge, and quietly inspired others with his “unbelievable work ethic and desire to succeed.

“Bobby was the best there was, and (in the 1970s) people started running because of him, including myself. I’m the coach I am because of him,” said Jim Doyle, who has been successful as a high school track and cross country coach, first at St. Raphael Academy and now at Bishop Hendricken. “I would run workouts by Bobby all the time. He was the proving ground because he’d done it. Everything he learned from his experiences, he taught me.”

Doyle — whose father, James, died of a heart attack when he was 45 and Bobby was a senior in high school — spent the last 15 years or so passing on his wisdom to the next generation of runners, coaching for a couple of years at La Salle Academy before becoming a coach at Woonsocket, where he had been since.

Doyle’s proudest achievement as a coach, Jim Doyle says, came in 1996 when Woonsocket captured the Rhode Island Interscholastic League State Cross Country Championship with just five varsity runners on the roster.

“Bobby loved working with the kids at Woonsocket,” Jim Doyle said. “He loved making an impression on them.”

“I hope most of the running community knows that they’ve lost a good one,” Walton said about the father of five who made his home in Tiverton with his wife, Lori. “And it’s not even about the running. It’s about what Bobby did for people, and it didn’t matter what kind of person you were. That’s something people don’t realize. His running was excellent, but Bobby the man was great.”

cthorn@projo.com