Dick Traum, who was thought to be the primary particular person to run a marathon on a prosthetic leg, ending New York’s race in 1976, and who went on to discovered the Achilles Track Club to encourage different disabled athletes in an period after they confronted obstacles to participation in sports activities, died on Jan. 23 in Manhattan. He was 83.
His loss of life, at a rehabilitation facility after a coronary heart assault, was confirmed by his spouse, Elizabeth Traum.
Mr. Traum entered the New York City Marathon the primary yr the race expanded to all 5 boroughs, within the early flush of the Nineteen Seventies jogging increase. There have been about 2,000 runners, and Mr. Traum, whose proper leg had been amputated above the knee, was certainly one of simply two with a incapacity. Given a four-hour head begin, he was handed at mile 18 by the eventual winner, Bill Rodgers, who shouted, “Attaboy, Dick!”
Mr. Traum went on to race in additional than 70 marathons, at first on his synthetic leg and later by cranking a handcycle, a low, three-wheeled bike powered by his arms. In 1993, utilizing forearm crutches, he jogged with President Bill Clinton in Washington.
The Achilles Track Club, which he based in 1983 and led for 36 years, expanded to 18 nations, offering free coaching recommendation and psychological assist. Now named Achilles International, the group says 150,000 individuals have participated in its applications. In November, practically 500 disabled athletes and guides raced within the newest New York City Marathon, many within the membership’s neon yellow T-shirts.
“When an able-bodied runner gets passed by someone on one leg, it changes their perception of what the disabled can do,” Mr. Traum instructed Act Daily News in 2012. “It also changes the way disabled athletes perceive themselves.”
A member of the New York Road Runners Hall of Fame, Mr. Traum persuaded its founder, Fred Lebow — who created the New York City Marathon — to sponsor the Achilles Track Club. At first, they tried to draw contributors by contacting runners within the medical occupation who may need disabled sufferers. Almost nobody responded.
Then Mr. Traum tried buttonholing individuals on the road. “I’d see someone with a disability and would say, ‘Hey, how about joining Achilles?’” he instructed The New York Times in 1985. “Unbelievably, for every three people I asked, one would say, ‘Gee, that’s a good idea.’”
In 1984, he instructed The Times, all 13 Achilles members who had entered the New York marathon completed the race. A dozen years later, 260 disabled athletes entered the occasion, together with blind runners and people with a number of sclerosis, cerebral palsy, coronary heart transplants and autism. The group cites Mr. Traum as the primary particular person to run a marathon on a prosthetic leg.
The program expanded to incorporate Achilles Kids, which helps disabled kids, and the Freedom Team, which trains wounded veterans, together with some at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. Trisha Meili, who turned referred to as the Central Park Jogger after a brutal assault in 1989, started operating with Achilles throughout her restoration and later teamed up with Mr. Traum to prepare the Hope & Possibility Race, a five-mile run-walk occasion in Central Park.
“We share an unfortunate bond,” Ms. Meili stated of the contributors in a 2005 race. But “we’re pushing forward and saying, ‘Look what we can do.’”
Richard George Traum was born on Nov. 18, 1940, in Manhattan. His father, Aaron Traum, helped run a household business, the David Traum Company, which offered zippers and different notions on East twenty sixth Street. His mom Lilly (Korn) Traum, was employed within the business earlier than she married. Richard graduated from the Horace Mann School within the Bronx in 1958.
In 1965, whereas standing behind his automobile at a fuel station on the New Jersey Turnpike, Mr. Traum was crushed by one other driver. Both his legs have been damaged on the higher thigh, ensuing within the amputation. He was in a Ph.D. program in industrial psychology on the time on the New York University Sloan School of Business, the place he had earlier earned B.S. and M.B.A. levels. He accomplished his doctorate in 1973.
A former school wrestler, Mr. Traum grew sedentary and off form after his accident whereas operating a human sources consulting agency he had based. When a good friend died of a coronary heart assault, Mr. Traum resolved to get again in form. He joined a health program on the West Side Y.M.C.A., the place, like different contributors, he was required to run for 10 minutes. At first he hop-stepped, discovering jogging on his synthetic leg exhausting. It was three months earlier than he might run for 10 minutes.
“I’d ask my coach how I was doing compared to the other amputees, and he’d say, ‘About the same,’” he later recalled. “The joke was, there were no other amputee runners.”
After a yr, Mr. Traum ran a five-mile race in Central Park, and on Oct. 26, 1976, he raced within the metropolis’s 26.2-mile marathon, ending in 7 hours and 51 minutes. He was hooked.
In addition to his spouse, he’s survived by a son, Joseph; a granddaughter; and a sister, Joanne Raffel. He lived in Manhattan.
At 78, Mr. Traum was the oldest New Yorker within the 2019 Boston Marathon, his 74th marathon, which he entered utilizing a handcycle. He had switched to the bike after having knee alternative surgical procedure on his left leg within the early 2000s.
Paradoxically, Mr. Traum had opposed wheelchair racers when the primary ones tried to enter the New York marathon in 1977. The Road Runners membership rejected the entrants on the grounds that they posed a menace to runners. Mr. Traum on the time known as wheelchairs a “lethal instrument” that would hit speeds of 30 miles per hour rolling off the ramp of the 59th Street Bridge.
But after a wheelchair racer took his case to New York State Supreme Court, the Road Runners reached a settlement and admitted him. Wheelchairs — each push-rim fashions and handcycles — finally turned commonplace.
After Mr. Traum retired as president of Achilles International in 2019, he turned president of the United States Wheelchair Sports Fund, the place he was working at his loss of life.
Source: www.nytimes.com