CECAS grants administrator turns unexpected opportunity into a labor of love


Anyone who has seen a romantic comedy knows the concept of a meet-cute.

Examples include Harry and Sally bickering in the car on their way to Chicago in When Harry Met Sally and Anna Scott meeting Will at a travel bookstore in Notting Hill. The list goes on. People tend to label meet-cute tropes as unrealistic, something only seen on screen. However, some are lucky enough to experience it for themselves in real life.

One such person is Wally Dunn, a grants administrator in the College of Engineering, Computing and Applied Sciences Proposal Development office. And because of his meet-cute, he eventually found himself teaching marathon training at Clemson University. 

Wally and his wife, Heather, knew each other 30 years ago when they lived on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, in the 1990s, long before getting together romantically. After moving away from Hilton Head, they went their separate ways, seeing each other only in passing a few times over the years, including once while traveling to the Boston Marathon.

During this time, in 2008, Heather started teaching a leisure skills course at Clemson. In the fall of 2010, Heather and her students volunteered at the Paris Mountain Road Race in Greenville, South Carolina. It was there that Wally and Heather unexpectedly reunited. 

“Literally, she ran into me in the crowd,” Wally said. “She was walking through the crowd, and her head literally bounced off my chest. We looked at each other and went, ‘Well hey!’” 

Three months later, they began seeing each other, and the following year, they got married. 

Heather continued to teach marathon training, but one year, just before Fall classes started, Heather found out a colleague had been diagnosed with cancer, so she took over those classes. With Heather suddenly unable to teach the marathon class, Wally offered to do it for her. After gaining approval from the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism, Wally began teaching the class and has done so for the past 12 years. 

With a lifetime of experience, having run 55 marathons since 1978, Wally said he loves to teach, making him an ideal instructor for the course. He said, “I’ve always enjoyed teaching and coaching. I tell people that it’s one of my favorite things to do. Now, I actually get paid to talk about running. In a very real sense, the marathon class is one of the reasons why I’m here at Clemson.” 

Since taking over the marathon training class, Wally has had much to be proud of as an instructor. He enjoys having a positive impact on his students and their health.

“I’ve had a couple of students who have come into the class and didn’t like to run, and yet at the end of the class, they found pleasure. They found fun. They found comfort in it,” he said. “I’ve had students who, after they graduated, finished marathons and emailed me to thank me. That’s very rewarding.” Wally teaches his students how to be happy and healthy runners to convey that running is a lifelong adventure, just as it has been for him and Heather. While running may not lead everyone to the love of their life, Wally proves that it can change lives for the better — sometimes in the most unexpected ways — making it all the more worthwhile.

––Allison Jennings ’25

Action shot of Wally Dunn during a run

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