KANSAN.COM / THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN / WEDNESDAY, JULY 21, 2010 / SPORTS
31
OBITUARY
National champion runner dies at 78
Dick Wilson, a former track and cross-country runner, died Saturday at Lawrence Memorial Hospital. He won a national championship at Kansas and was inducted into the KU Athletics Hall of Fame in 2008.
Track star fought cancer for more than 21 months
BY HANNAH JENNISON hjennison@kansan.com
Kansas track star Richard "Dick" Wilson Sr. died Saturday at Lawrence Memorial Hospital after a 21-month battle with brain cancer. He was 78.
Wilson was born Dec. 29,1931 in Schenectady, N.Y. He graduated from Mount Pleasant High School in 1950 and attended the University on a cross country and track scholarship.
Wilson was a member of the 1953 NCAA championship cross-country team — Kansas' only cross-country team to ever win a national championship — and part of the four-mile relay team that broke the American record that same year. In 2008 he was inducted into the KU Athletics Hall of Fame.
After graduation, Wilson served in the U.S. Army and U.S. Army Reserves from 1956 to 1968, achieving the rank of captain.
He married Phyllis JoAn Fink on July 15, 1956.
He began his career in commercial underwriting in 1957 and advanced until he retired in 1992 in Lawrence. He was with the Travelers Insurance Company for 35 years.
He and his wife raised three children, moving from Schenectady, N.Y., Palatine, Ill., and Indianapolis before settling in Lawrence in 1992.
A competitive Masters runner for more than 30 years, Wilson was nationally ranked in the top 10 of his age group every year from 1985 to 2005. In 2003 he was ranked No. 2
in the nation and No.4 in the world in his age group.
Last year, after doctors removed 95 percent of a brain tumor, Wilson ran in the Head for the Cure 5K,a race to support the Chris Anthony Tumor Research Fund at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.The race honors the late Chris Anthony, who died at 37 from a brain tumor.
"Maybe someday there will be a cure," Wilson said in a 2009 Kansan
article about participating in the race. "And if there is, it can hopefully help my children and help my grandchildren."
His wife survives him. Other survivors include two sons, Rick and wife Leslie, Indianapolis, and Steve and wife Michelle, Overland Park; a daughter, Patricia Geyling and husband Rolf, Santa Barbara, Calif.; 12 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
The family suggests memorials
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Online condolences may be sent at rumsey-yost.com.
A memorial service was held Tuesday at the First Baptist Church of Lawrence, 1330 Kasold Dr.
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to the 1953 Cross Country Fund No. 37747 at Kansas Athletics, the Olympic Village Project at Kansas Track and Field, or the First Baptist Church of Lawrence. Memorials may be sent in care of Rumsey-Yost Funeral Home, 601 Indiana St.
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