Dick Traum, 83, deceased; Marathon runner champion disabled athletes

Dick Traum, who was credited with being the first person to run a marathon on a prosthetic leg, completing the 1976 New York race, and who subsequently founded the Achilles Track Club to encourage other disabled athletes in an era when they barriers to participation faced in sports, died January 23 in Manhattan. He was 83.

His death, in a rehabilitation center after a heart attack, was confirmed by his wife, Elizabeth Traum.

Mr. Traum competed in the New York City Marathon the first year the race expanded to all five boroughs, at the start of the jogging boom of the 1970s. There were about 2,000 runners, and Mr. Traum, whose right leg was amputated above the knee, was one of only two with disabilities. With a four-hour lead, he was passed at mile 18 by the eventual winner, Bill Rodgers, who shouted, “Attaboy, Dick!”

Mr. Traum went on to race in more than 70 marathons, first on his artificial leg and later by cranking a hand cycle, a low three-wheeled bicycle powered by his arms. In 1993, he jogged with President Bill Clinton in Washington using forearm crutches.

The Achilles Track Club, which he founded in 1983 and led for 36 years, expanded to 18 countries and provided free training advice and psychological support. Now mentioned Achilles InternationalAccording to the organization, 150,000 people have participated in its programs. In November, nearly 500 disabled athletes and guides took part in the latest New York City Marathon, many wearing the club's neon yellow T-shirts.

“When an able-bodied runner is passed by someone on one leg, it changes their perception of what disabled people can do,” Mr. Traum told CNN in 2012. “It also changes the way disabled athletes see themselves.”

A member of the New York Road Runners Hall of Fame, Mr. Traum convinced founder Fred Lebow – who created the New York City Marathon – to sponsor the Achilles Track Club. They initially tried to attract participants by contacting runners in the medical profession who might have disabled patients. Almost no one responded.

Then Mr. Traum tried to trap people on the street. “I saw someone with a disability and said, 'Hey, how about working at Achilles?'” he told The New York Times in 1985. “Amazingly, for every three people I asked, someone would say, 'Gosh, that's a good idea.'”

In 1984, he told The Times, all thirteen Achilles members who had competed in the New York Marathon finished the race. A decade later, 260 disabled athletes took part in the event, including blind runners and people with multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, heart transplants and autism. The organization calls Mr. Traum the first person to run a marathon wearing a prosthetic leg.

The program was expanded with Achilles childrenthat helps disabled children, and the The Freedom Teamthat trains wounded veterans, including some at 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 her recovery and later teamed up with Mr. Traum to create the Hope & Possibility Racea five-mile running event in Central Park.

“We share an unhappy bond,” Ms. Meili said of the participants in a 2005 race. But “we are 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, the 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 standing behind his car at a gas station on the New Jersey Turnpike, Mr. Traum was crushed by another driver. Both his legs were broken at the thigh, resulting in the amputation. He was in a Ph.D. program in industrial psychology at New York University Sloan School of Business, where he previously earned a BS and MBA degree. He received his PhD in 1973.

A former college wrestler, Mr. Traum became sedentary and out of shape after his accident while running an HR consulting firm he founded. When a friend died of a heart attack, Mr. Traum decided to get back into shape. He participated in a fitness program at the West Side YMCA, where he, like other participants, had to run for 10 minutes. At first he hopped and found it difficult to jog on his artificial leg. It took three months before he could run 10 minutes.

“I asked my coach how I was doing compared to the other amputees, and he said, 'About 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 raced in the city's 26.2-mile marathon, finishing in 7 hours, 51 minutes. He was addicted.

Besides his wife, so is he 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 at the 2019 Boston Marathon, his 74th marathon, in which he competed on a hand cycle. 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 because they posed a threat to the runners. At the time, Mr. Traum called wheelchairs a “deadly instrument” that could reach speeds of 30 miles per hour when rolling down the ramp of the 59th Street Bridge.

But after a wheelchair racer took his case to the New York State Supreme Court, the Road Runners reached a settlement and admitted him. Wheelchairs – both models with push rims and hand cycles – eventually became commonplace.

After Mr. Traum retired as president of Achilles International in 2019, he became president of the United States Wheelchair Sports Fund, where he worked until his death.