“But I’ve never … I’m shy, I get embarrassed,” Mr. Moore, who wrote about the experience in Sports Illustrated, recalled telling Mr. Towne. “I became a writer so I wouldn’t have to talk.”
“You’re an athlete,” Mr. Towne said. “And the character is easily embarrassed.”
In his review, Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote that Mr. Moore was “the biggest surprise” — “relaxed, charming, low-keyed and self-assured.”
After leaving Sports Illustrated in 1995, Mr. Moore collaborated with Mr. Towne on the screenplay for “Without Limits” (1998), about the brash Oregon runner Steve Prefontaine, who held seven American distance records at his death in a car accident in 1975. He and Mr. Moore had been close friends.
In addition to his brother, Mr. Moore is survived by his wife, Connie Johnston Moore. His first marriage, to Roberta Conlan, ended in divorce.
Starting in the mid-1990s, Mr. Moore helped lead a human rights campaign to publicize the plight of Mr. Wolde, a former Army captain who was accused of killing a boy during the reign of terror in Ethiopia that followed the overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974.
Mr. Wolde proclaimed his innocence in a case that was finally decided in 2002 when a judge convicted him of a lesser charge and sentenced him to six years in prison, then freed him because he had already served nine.
Mr. Moore recalled in a Runner’s World article in 2018 that he spoke by telephone with Mr. Wolde soon after his release.
“How’s your health?” Mr. Moore asked.
“Hey,” said Mr. Wolde, who died a few months later, “give me a couple of months to recuperate and I’ll race you anywhere you want, any distance you want!”
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/30/sports/kenny-moore-dead.html
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