Dick Traum, considered the first person to run a marathon with a prosthetic leg, finishing the race in New York in 1976, and who founded the Achilles Track Club to encourage other disabled athletes in an era when they faced barriers to participation. in the sport, he died on January 23 in Manhattan. He was 83 years old.
His death, in a rehabilitation center after a heart attack, was confirmed by his wife, Elizabeth Traum.
Mr. Traum participated in the New York City Marathon The first year the degree was expanded to the five boroughs, at the start of the jogging boom in the 1970s. There were about 2,000 runners, and Mr. Traum, whose right leg had been amputated above the knee, was one of only two with disabilities . With a four-hour lead, he was passed at mile 18 by eventual winner Bill Rodgers, who yelled, “Attaboy, Dick!”
Traum ran more than 70 marathons, at first with his artificial leg and later with a handcycle, a low, three-wheeled bicycle propelled by his arms. In 1993, using forearm crutches, he jogged with President Bill Clinton in Washington.
The Achilles Track Club, which he founded in 1983 and ran for 36 years, expanded to 18 countries, providing free training advice and psychological support. Now named Achilles International, the organization claims that 150,000 people have participated in its programs. In November, nearly 500 disabled athletes and guides ran in the latest New York City Marathon, many of them wearing the club’s neon yellow T-shirts.
“When a healthy runner is passed by someone on one leg, it changes their perception of what the disabled can do,” Traum told CNN in 2012. “It also changes the way disabled athletes perceive themselves.”
A member of the New York Road Runners Hall of Fame, Traum convinced its founder, Fred Lebow, who created the New York City Marathon, to sponsor the Achilles Track Club. At first, they tried to attract participants by contacting brokers in the medical profession who might have disabled patients. Almost no one responded.
Then Mr. Traum tried to corner people in the street. “I would see someone with a disability and say, ‘Hey, how about you join Achilles?’” he told the New York Times in 1985. “Incredibly, for every three people I asked, one told me: ‘Wow, that’s a good idea.'”
In 1984, he told The Times, all 13 Achilles members who had participated in the New York Marathon finished the race. A dozen years later, 260 disabled athletes participated in the event, including blind runners and people with multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, heart transplants and autism. The organization cites Mr. Traum as the first person to run a marathon with a prosthetic leg.
The program was expanded to include Children of Achillesthat helps disabled children, and the freedom teamwhich trains wounded veterans, including some from Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. Trisha Meiliwho became known as the Central Park Jogger after a brutal attack in 1989, began running with Achilles during his recovery and later teamed up with Mr. Traum to organize the Race of hope and possibilitya five-mile run and walk event in Central Park.
“We share an unfortunate bond,” Meili said of participants in a 2005 race. But “we’re moving forward and saying, ‘Look what we can do.’”
Richard George Traum was born on November 18, 1940 in Manhattan. His father, Aaron Traum, helped run a family business, David Traum Company, which sold zippers and other items on East 26th Street. His mother, Lilly (Korn) Traum, worked in the business before she married. Richard graduated from the Horace Mann School in the Bronx in 1958.
In 1965, while behind his car at a gas station on the New Jersey Turnpike, Mr. Traum was hit by another driver. He had both legs broken in the upper thigh, which led to amputation. He was in a Ph.D. he industrial psychology program at the time at New York University’s Sloan School of Business, where he had previously earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business administration. He completed his doctorate in 1973.
Traum, a former college wrestler, became sedentary and out of shape after his accident while running a human resources consulting company he had founded. When a friend died of a heart attack, Mr. Traum decided to get in shape. He joined a fitness program at the West Side YMCA, where, like other participants, he was required to run for 10 minutes. At first he jumped and found it difficult to jog with his artificial leg. It was three months before he could run 10 minutes.
“I would ask my trainer how I was doing compared to the other amputees and he would say, ‘Pretty much the same,’” he later recalled. “The joke was that there were no other amputee runners.”
After a year, Mr. Traum ran a five-mile race in Central Park, and on October 26, 1976, he ran in the city’s 26.2-mile marathon, finishing in 7 hours and 51 minutes. He was hooked.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by a son, Joseph; a granddaughter; and a sister, Joanne Raffel. She lived in Manhattan.
At 78, Traum was the oldest New Yorker in the 2019 Boston Marathon, his 74th marathon, in which he participated using a handcycle. He had switched to cycling after undergoing knee replacement surgery on his left leg in the early 2000s.
Paradoxically, Mr. Traum had opposed wheelchair racers when the first tried to participate in the New York Marathon in 1977. The Road Runners club rejected the participants, claiming that they posed a threat to the runners. At the time, Traum called wheelchairs a “deadly instrument” that could reach speeds of 30 miles per hour when exiting the 59th Street Bridge ramp.
But after a wheelchair racer took his case to the New York State Supreme Court, the Road Runners settled and admitted him. Wheelchairs, both push-rim models and handcycles, eventually became commonplace.
After Traum retired as president of Achilles International in 2019, he became president of the United States Wheelchair Sports Fund, where he was working when he died.
