Aaron Kwittken
The triathlete’s tale
By BILL FALLON

Aaron Kwittken was always athletic. He can’t hide it. Athleticism is in his posture and in his demeanor. He reels off the sports of the red-blooded American boy the 37-year-old pubic relations executive once was; he played them all: baseball, football, swimming, track and (via pole vault) field. One look and it’s a safe bet Aaron Kwittken has never been seriously out of shape in his life.

When his father Dr. John Kwittken died without warning of a heart attack Feb 2, Kwittken asked his athleticism to serve a higher purpose: to help him with the grieving process. He also called upon his relationship with White Plains-based Westchester Jewish Community Services – he’s a four-year board member – immersing himself in its offerings to assuage the grief.

“Grieving is an individual experience and it takes a long time,” Kwittken said, adding a saying he has read: “You’ll never get over your father’s death, but you’ll get used to it.”

Kwittken said he and his father had a difficult relationship when he was a youth. “When I became a father, we reconciled and became quite close,” he said.

Kwittken identified his father, a doctor of pathologies of the skin, a Mount Vernon resident and a former medical examiner for the borough of Queens, as “a great athlete.” His mother Marianne Kwittken lives today in Englewood, N.J. His wife is Tessa and they have a 7-year-old boy named Renner and a 4-year-old girl named Lucy.

Tessa and Aaron will celebrate their 10th anniversary Sept. 6. For the big day, Aaron gifted his wife with a spa weekend in New York City. Her joy, he admits, was tempered by the later news he would take advantage of the timing to compete in the New York City biathlon (run, bike and run in Central Park) Sept. 7. “I tell her I could have far worse vices in life. This is a very healthy vice to have.”

At the time of his father’s death, Kwittken had dabbled in triathlons, competing in an indoor triathlon at the Saw Mill Club in Mount Kisco in April ’07. “I did well,” he said. “It felt really good.”

With his father’s death, Kwittken realized he possessed a tool to help navigate waters that anyone who has loved and lost will recognize as dark and deep. What had been casual workouts now had a purpose. “It’s an outlet and it’s constructive,” he said. “I’ve always been in shape, but with my father’s death, my training was rechanneled and given purpose.”

The upshot of his renewed vigor found Kwittken in Harriman Aug. 17 for a half-mile swim, a 16-mile bike ride and a three-mile run – all accomplished in 1 hour, 40 minutes. It was his third triathlon, followed in short order by the Aug. 30 triathlon in Armonk for which he was training when he spoke for this article a recent morning at Armonk’s Anita Louise Ehrman Pool.

Kwittken graduated from George Washington University. After college, he worked for a number of top advertising and public relations firms before setting out four years ago to create his own company – Kwittken & Co. – in Manhattan. He has since been named to Public Relations magazine’s “40 under 40” list and his company has received several industry nods, including “Best Small P.R. Agency” from PR Week magazine. The company now employs 22 at its Midtown office.

“We work with a variety of clients in health care, medical, consulting, technology and fashion – it’s very diverse,” Kwittken said. “We help them manage their reputations.”

Among Kwittken’s more curious clients is U.S. News and World Report. Can’t a boatload of wordsmiths make their points without help?

“Reporters need coaching about being the interviewees,” he said. “It’s so different being on the other side.” U.S. News reporters notably find themselves facing the microphones this time of year because the magazine’s college rankings have become an annual national fixation.

With his swimsuit on beneath his cargo shorts, it only takes a moment for Kwittken to transform himself from casual guy on the deck to buff Olympian at the head of the swimming lane. He eases into the water – no diving, the sign reads – and begins the relaxed stroke of a really good swimmer. It is, he said, his best event; his biking needs work.

He heads to one end, turns and repeats the process. If all goes well, it is a regiment that will lead him in 2010 to half an Iron Man triathlon: 1.5-mile swim; 50 miles on the bike; and a 13.1-mile run.

“I think I’ll stop at the half-Iron Man,” he said. “I love my body too much, and my joints too much, to push beyond that.”

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