The Mayor of Central Park

Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times

Relatively few runners ventured out in the cold, gray drizzle to circle the Central Park Reservoir on Sunday, but many of those who did stopped, some in tears, to pay tribute to one of the reservoir’s most colorful and enduring figures.

A memorial at the South Gate House of the Central Park Reservoir for Alberto Arroyo, who died on Thursday at 94. He used to preside over the running track from a bench there.
An improvised memorial had been assembled at the South Gate House, where Alberto Arroyo, who had been called the mayor of Central Park, held court from a bench each day, waving and offering advice to friends and strangers alike, massaging the feet of fellow runners and even standing on his head.

Mr. Arroyo, 94, a retired clerk, died at a Manhattan nursing home on Thursday, but some runners on Sunday learned of his death only by reading the obituary that had been taped on a gate house window, next to photographs of him and a few flowers.

One of those runners, Patty Karbowski, 37, said through tears that “anyone who has run around the reservoir for years has met him, has run with him.”

Ms. Karbowski said she met Mr. Arroyo seven years ago and last saw him in January at the nursing home.

“He’d been sick for a while,” she added. “I just knew the day was coming soon.”

Mr. Arroyo had been a presence at the reservoir for decades and even claimed to have been the first person to jog around it — using what was then a maintenance footpath. He said he first took the footpath in 1937, after a policeman told him to stop running on the bridle path just below the footpath because he was disturbing the horses.

When he was not running the 1.6-mile oval several times daily, he sat on the bench, spending up to 10 hours in the park every day. Eventually, a plaque was put on the bench with his name on it.

“We always questioned, ‘Who was this guy?’ ” said Keith Lite, 51, who was walking around the reservoir on Sunday with his son, Zack, 17. “He was almost a beacon. You’d run and see him and think, I can’t be that tired if he’s still here.”

Judith Clements, 66, who had known Mr. Arroyo for 20 years and received foot massages that she described as “spiritual,” called him an inspiration. “The reservoir was his whole life. He was a fixture here,” she said.

After a stroke in 2008, Mr. Arroyo was no longer able to make it around the reservoir on foot, so friends volunteered to push him in a wheelchair. Marty Barolsky, 64, said he was one of the 15 or so volunteers who took turns wheeling him clockwise around the reservoir so that he could greet the runners going in the other direction.

“Everybody waved, ‘Hey, Alberto! You’re looking great!’ ” Mr. Barolsky said of their last circuit together in February. “He was the grand guru of jogging, and when you pushed him into Central Park, he went from a regular guy in a wheelchair to a celebrity.”