After crossing the finish line of the first Baltimore Marathon two decades ago, Mark Fetting collapsed.

He’d passed two kidney stones during his training and, over the course of completing 26.2 miles, he’d battled another.

“That’s just a day in the life of Mark Fetting,” said his wife, Georgia “Georgie” Smith.

She ran that 2001 race, too, and as she passed Fetting and asked what was wrong, he repeated to her: It’s fine. Just keep going.

He was a champion of Baltimore — whether it was by running its streets or joining various boards — and served as the CEO of Legg Mason. Fetting, who passionately supported his three children, adored Stephen Sondheim’s music, and hiked all 48 of the 4,000-foot-tall mountains in New Hampshire, died Saturday morning after a heart attack. He was 70 years old.

Born November 23, 1954, to John “Jack” H. Fetting Jr. and the former Mary Angela Lacy, Fetting graduated from The Gilman School, played squash at the University of Pennsylvania and later sat outside the admissions’ office of Harvard Business School until the dean agreed to talk to him.

After he got into the graduate school, he found a place to live and told his landlady that his girlfriend would be moving in with him. When she replied that only married couples could live under that roof, he quickly assured her he was actually engaged.

He wasn’t yet, of course, but it wasn’t much of a stretch.

The pair met at a basement party when they were 15 years old, and Smith said it was “love at first sight.” Fetting proposed soon after fibbing to the landlady and, in 1979, they were married in Smith’s mother’s backyard on Brightside Road in Baltimore. (They eventually moved into that home and, years later, ran a summer program in Pennsylvania for Baltimore youths they dubbed “Camp Brightside.”)

“I promise you, I have loved him every day of my life. Pretty nice thing to have in your life,” Smith said in a phone interview Monday.

She spoke from a lake in New Hampshire, surrounded by their three children and five grandchildren under the age of 12.

The entire family had scheduled to spend this week together and, in the days leading up to it, Fetting did cannonballs off a dock with his grandchildren. He was playing in the yard with them Saturday morning, just before he died.

“He never stopped, never slowed down,” Smith said, adding that, in addition to a tireless work ethic, he also had an unflappable moral code.

He once said the hardest he ever worked was when he successfully ran a Congressional campaign.

After U.S. Rep. Goodloe Byron died of a heart attack shortly before the 1978 election, his wife, Beverly Byron, picked up the baton to run in his place.

With Fetting’s help, she won.

Later, he worked for his family’s Fetting Jewelry business, as a vice president at T. Rowe Price, a partner at Greenwich Associates and then as president of retirement services for Prudential Services. At Prudential, he first lived and worked in Scranton, Pennsylvania, but later worked in Newark, New Jersey, while living in Baltimore.

To soften the commute, he’d stay in a rectory a couple of nights a week, before deciding in 2000 to take a job close to his family with the Baltimore-based investment firm Legg Mason.

“He was on a rocket ship career and family came first,” said Jen Smith, his former chief of staff at Prudential, who is now Under Armour’s chief people officer.

People often are attracted to jobs for the brand or the company, she said. But she uprooted and moved to Baltimore because of Fetting, joining him at Legg Mason.

“He loved Baltimore more than anyone I ever met,” she said, adding: “Baltimore was like his fourth child, for sure.”

Fetting led Legg Mason’s asset management segment and then worked on strategic development and major acquisitions before being named chairman and CEO in 2008, taking over for Raymond A. “Chip” Mason.

He stepped down, however, in 2012, as the company struggled to “turn around performance and retain client money,” The New York Times wrote.

“The opportunity to lead Legg Mason through a crucial period of its history has been both challenging and fulfilling,” Fetting said in a statement at the time.

Since then, he continued to serve on boards, including at Mercy Hospital, Baltimore School for the Arts and as board president at Gilman.

Sister Helen Amos, chair of Mercy’s board, said in a statement Tuesday that Fetting had an “unwavering commitment to the underserved” and called his death a “profound loss” for Mercy and the Baltimore community.

Fetting’s oldest son, Conor Fetting-Smith, recalled how vocally supportive Fetting was of him and his siblings — sister Carey and brother Noel — whether it was Carey’s illustrious field hockey career or the trio swimming for the Wilkes-Barre YMCA Dolphins.

“I remember feeling embarrassed that he cheered louder than the other parents,” Conor said.

He was nothing if not passionate. In his office, he proudly displayed evidence of his hiking accolades and signed sheet music from Sondheim (“He knows more about Sondheim than most people know about their life,” his wife, Smith, said).

Conor’s voice faltered only once during an interview Monday, as he recalled his father’s undying support for him as a gay man.

“My dad wasn’t the kind of dad that needed you to be some idea of what a man is. He loved us for who we were,” Conor said.

Fetting is survived by four siblings. His wife described him as having “more friends than any human.”

Jen Smith, Fetting’s former chief of staff, said she’ll often meet someone and, without fail, they’ll mention some connection to him.

“He’s a bit of a Forrest Gump, in that you never know where he’s gonna show up,” she said.

On Monday, that proved to be true in California. Franklin Templeton, the company that acquired Legg Mason in 2020, lowered their flags to half-staff at their headquarters in San Mateo in honor of the former executive, who led the firm through a ”crucial period of its history,” a spokesperson said.

Fetting was known for bringing people together and, when asked to speak at weddings, had a favorite quote from Oscar Hammerstein that he liked to recite.

“A bell’s not a bell ‘til you ring it,” he’d say. “A song’s not a song ‘til you sing it. Love in your heart wasn’t put there to stay. Love isn’t love ‘til you give it away.”

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