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Jack Richmond, CFo, is a runner. And, he wears a prosthesis in place of his right foot and lower leg. However, he's not an amputee runner, he asserts. "I'm a runner who happens to be an amputee," he says. And to the 15 able-bodied people whom he led through the 2009 and 2010 Country Music Marathon and Half Marathon as runners and fundraisers for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Team in Training, he's more than that. To them, he's "Coach."
"Everyone has their own mountains to climb," Richmond says, "and it just so happens that mine were learning how to run with a prosthesis and learning how to get on with my life with a prosthesis. We all deal with challenges, and sometimes those challenges become defining moments in our lives that make us a better person." This empathy for the human condition partly explains the Barr Foundation president's involvement in a group that has nothing to do with limb loss. Richmond has a history of stretching himself to work with people who need his skills, and such work has given him some of his most fulfilling experiences. His running story started, in fact, with a favor and a dream.
Just Try It
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| Jack Richmond, Boston Marathon 2001. MARATHONFOTO |
Richmond had been a U.S. Cycling Federation amateur racer when he lost his leg in a work-related accident. "The first thing that I wanted to do was to learn to ride again," Richmond recalls. "I worked with a great prosthetist who would come out with his bicycle and ride around with me…so he could watch me ride. Because of him, I completed my first 65-mile race less than nine months after I lost my leg." Richmond continued competing, and he says, "I wasn't winning the races but I was beating a lot of people with two good legs."
Through his job, he knew several nascent triathletes. "They said, ‘You know a lot about cycling, but we're all runners and swimmers, so would you coach us in cycling?'" Richmond recalls. He assented and began training them on Saturday mornings. In return, they nudged him to run. Richmond insisted that he didn't run—he'd never run more than two or three miles at a go. Then, he says, "I had a dream that I was a kid again—one of those full-color dreams that seem so real—and in it I was playing tag with my friends, running through a field of grass, and I felt my legs under me. When I woke up, first I thought, ‘Oh, it was just a dream—I'm an amputee, and I don't run.' And then I decided I should probably just try it."
Soon, he was running 5Ks with his friends, then graduated to 10Ks. He moved to Salt Lake City, where he joined a branch of the Achilles Track Club, a competitive running group for people with disabilities. With the encouragement of club runners, he stepped up his distances, and over the course of five years, prepared himself for the 1999 New York Marathon. After completing it, he started stacking on more races and helping other amputees learn to run. Not long after he completed his fifth marathon, he was contacted by the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS), a group leading the fight against deadly blood cancers.
Deadly Facts
According to LLS, every four minutes, someone in the United States is diagnosed with a blood cancer—leukemia, lymphoma, myeloma, or a myelodysplastic syndrome. Each year, leukemia alone kills more U.S. children than any other disease. Nearly 140,000 Americans were diagnosed with leukemia, lymphoma, or myeloma in 2009. These diseases kill more than 53,000 Americans per year ("Facts and Statistics," LLS, 2009).
One of LLS' main tools in the battle against blood cancers is Team in Training, a program that combines endurance sports with fundraising. Participants—many of them raw beginners—may run or walk a marathon or half marathon, cycle 100 miles, take a section of a triathlon, or hike long-distance. Participants raise money and in return receive friendly, high-quality coaching and support throughout their training and event. According to LLS Volunteer Director Lisa Bailey, since its inception in 1988, the program has helped more than 400,000 athletes raise a total of one billion dollars for LLS. LLS spreads much of its proceeds between services and research. The patient-service efforts include co-pay assistance programs, patient financial aid, and a back-to-school program for children with cancer. The research funding has contributed directly to some of the major discoveries in the field of blood cancer. This much abbreviated list of scientists whose research LLS has financially supported reads like a "Who's Who" in medical research:
- Brian Druker, MD, lead developer of Gleevec, a non-toxic treatment for chronic myelogenous leukemia.
- Robert Gallo, MD, co-discoverer of the AIDS virus.
- Emil Frei, III, MD, discoverer of a curative treatment for acute lymphocytic leukemia.
- Geoffrey M. Cooper, PhD, discoverer of oncogenes, which can cause healthy cells to become cancerous.
Bailey attributes Team in Training's prodigious fundraising skills to the support it gives participants. "We provide them with a lot of tools and techniques," Bailey says. "The main one is a website that we set up for them...about 80–90 percent of our participants' donations come in online…. Song nights are also very big here in Nashville, and people do auctions, wine tastings, good old-fashioned bake sales, and yard sales. Corporate sponsorships are also a great way to bring in big bucks if people have a relationship with a company."
Great Training
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| Jack Richmond’s Team in Training team at 5 a.m. on the day of the 2010 Country Music Marathon. Richmond is fourth from left. The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society raised $1.3 million with this year’s race. |
Many participants put in long hours of training and fundraising because they have a personal connection to the cause. Scott Dieter, a Team in Training fundraising team captain, says, "My dad died of lymphoma in December 2007, and I wished there was something I could do. A guy I work with showed me a Team in Training brochure he'd gotten in the mail, and I thought that I'd never, ever been a runner but that I would do it for Dad." Dieter was on the team that Richmond coached in 2009 and has firsthand experience with Richmond's coaching method.
"He's awesome," Dieter says. "I tell people that there's no way I could have done this without Jack.… I ran a half marathon last year. It was really hot that day, and about mile 11 I hit the proverbial wall and thought I was going to get sick. He stayed with me all the way to the finish line. After he got me to the finish line, what do you think he turned around and did? Went back and got more people to bring to the finish line."
Coming Full Circle
Richmond chuckles when he recalls how Team in Training asked him to coach. "They had seen my name on the Internet as a running coach…but they had kind of skipped over the part about me being an amputee," Richmond explains. "When they said they'd love to have me coach, I thought, ‘This is great—I'll help people raise money and I'll come full circle. Able-bodied people taught me to run marathons, and now I'll be able to go back and teach them'. After I told them I would do it, I said something about my leg and they asked what I was talking about. I said, ‘You know that I'm an amputee, right?' They had no idea, and said, ‘We're so sorry! We shouldn't have asked you to do this!' I kind of joked with them, ‘What?! You think I can't do this? You're going to discriminate against me now?'?"
Reports of whether Richmond's amputation affects his coaching vary. Bailey admits that she's not on the ground with the teams every day, but that she thinks Jack's amputation is "a non-issue for his team.… Our coaches, including Jack, are well known for getting people to the start line in a good place and then having the race be a piece of cake." Dieter says that like Team in Training's recruiters, he had no idea that Richmond had an amputation for quite a while after meeting him. Richmond himself says, "I guess it encourages people to see that I had overcome this physical injury. It helps them overcome not only what they're dealing with physically getting ready for a race and pushing through some of the little injuries that are inevitable when you're training for a marathon, but also psychologically. I think it helps them to say, ‘If he can be tough enough to run a marathon after what he went through, I can too.'"
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| Jack Richmond’s Team in Training team at 5 a.m. on the day of the 2010 Country Music Marathon. Richmond is fourth from left. The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society raised $1.3 million with this year’s race. |
Richmond also works as an area sales manager at The Fillauer Companies, Chattanooga, Tennessee. Gerry Stark, CPO/L, FAAOP, Fillauer vice president of product development and education, says, "I think Jack is a very driven individual…. He's always willing to try, and I think his greatest asset is that he's someone who's willing to put himself out there and be in a bit of an awkward position so that in the end he can grow."
For Richmond, one of the main reasons he forces himself to grow is to help other people. "Team in Training is a win-win situation for everyone involved," he says. "People get the opportunity to accomplish something that they never thought that they could do that will probably change their lives and will definitely change the lives of people who are fighting the battle against leukemia.
"At the end of the day," he concludes, "if you haven't done something good for someone else, have you really done anything?"
Morgan Stanfield can be reached at
