By Madison Butkus
Hometown Weekly Reporter
Needham Father and Daughter duo Clara and Mike Nowlan will be running the 2024 Boston Marathon on Monday, April 15th with the critical mission of supporting children and youth. These first time marathon runners are taking on the 26.2 mile course together to help fundraise for The Home for Little Wanderers, the nation’s oldest child welfare organization.
Hannah Boutiette, Assistant Account Director at Teak & Communication, has helped spread the word of the Nowlan’s incredible story while providing great detail about the organization they are running for. Hannah wrote, “The Home for Little Wanderers has helped children and families build permanent, positive change in the Northeast for more than 200 years. The Home cares for children in at-risk circumstances and offers more than 30 community-based and residential programs that support youth who have often experienced abuse, neglect, trauma or a disrupted family life. The organization serves 15,000 children and family members each year in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and New York, through its foster care and adoption, behavioral health, clinical services, special education schools, residential care, and young adult programs.”
What makes this organization truly special for Clara and Mike is that Mike previously served as The Home’s Interim CFO, finishing up this position just last month. This truly allowed him to gain a deep understanding of how The Home’s financial resources impact the work of the agency and the number of children served. “Through my work there,” Mike stated, “I learned that a lot of the direct care professionals and the technicians are really kind of underpaid for all the work that they do. And the resources required to support all these programs are vast and there are a lot of contractual obligations. So it really is a tough business and they do a lot of great work which makes Clara and I so happy to run in support for them.”
Clara is also vastly familiar with the importance of helping children and families as she is currently a social worker for the Los Angeles Unified School District near her home in Culver City, California. Within this field, she provides mental health care and support to K-12 students.
Both Clara and Mike have talked about running the Boston Marathon for upwards of twelve years at this point, but always thought it would be just a dream rather than a reality. While currently living across the country from one another, they both had mentioned that training has been somewhat of a challenge. “Training for this is kind of a bittersweet thing,” Clara mentioned, “since I do live in LA and so we are not able to do any training together. And we are both doing the training in solo endeavors and that definitely makes it hard. Especially more mentally harder when having to do these long runs by yourself. When you have a running buddy or workout buddy, it just makes it so much easier and easier to be accountable. I’m lucky though since I am in LA and I don’t have the New England weather to worry about that you guys and my Dad have in Boston. I’m not dealing with the freezing cold, I’m not dealing with snow, so I definitely have an easier time with that. The only real problem I have is daylight savings and having it get dark so early. It can be very difficult to work all day then come home and have to run in the dark.”
Despite the challenges of being separated during this training, both Mike and Clara seem to be excellent motivators for one another. They have been able to run together over Christmas break which they explained was an excellent boost for them to keep their momentum high.
This father-daughter duo plan on sticking together for the entirety of the race, which should make for an especially memorable day for them both. Their goal for fundraising is 20 to 25k and donations are allowed to be made even after April 15th. For more information on Mike and Clara, as well as to make a donation to their incredible cause, please visit The Home for Little Wanderers website at www.thehome.org/running-boston-for-the-home-meet-mike-and-clara-nowlan/.
On behalf of Hometown Weekly Newspaper, we wish Mike, Clara and all running in the Boston Marathon good luck during Monday’s race!
