Alan: The first year that Aquinas Institute offered Spanish, Dick and I sat next to one another in Mr. Ling's class. I liked Dick. We chatted often and amiably. He is the only person I remember from that class.
Aquinas grad and two-time U.S. Olympian Dick Buerkle dies at age 72
Rochester native Dick Buerkle, who at one time held the world indoor track and field record for the mile and twice qualified for the U. S. Olympic team, died Monday morning having suffered from a rare form of Parkinson’s called Multiple System Atrophy. He was 72.
“Dick never stopped pushing,” his daughter Lily Buerkle said. “There was no such thing as a relaxed family run around the block. Every run ended in a sprint. Dick’s elbow would always find a way to edge out the person next to him, even if it was his young daughter.”
Buerkle graduated from Aquinas Institute in 1966, having competed for the Little Irish track team in only his senior year. He went on to Villanova University and performed as a non-scholarship athlete for two track seasons before finally earning a scholarship in his junior year.
During his time in college, he was a three-time NCAA All-American who finished third in three NCAA finals events: The 1969 and 1970 indoor two-mile race and the 1970 outdoor three-miler.
Known for his bald head long before the look became chic – he lost all his hair by the age of 12 due to alopecia – he graduated in 1970 and became a star runner on the national track circuit, though he remained an amateur.
As he lost his hair, the chip on his shoulder grew,” said Lily, who also added that later in her father’s life, he was, “forever thankful to Michael Jordan for shaving his head and ultimately making bald cool.”While he achieved fame for his 1978 world record time in the mile, between 1970 and 1981 he was ranked among the top 10 Americans at the 5,000-meter distance seven times and was No. 1 in the U.S. in 1974, No. 4 in the world.
That was the distance at which he competed in the Olympics. He did not make the 1972 team that went to Munich, but he won the 1976 U.S. Olympic trials to earn his spot in the Summer Games at Montreal.
By that time, following four years of teaching and coaching at Bishop Kearney High School, he had moved to Buffalo and was working for Bausch and Lomb as a contact lens salesman. At Montreal, he ran ninth in the trial and did not get to race for gold in the final.
Buerkle also qualified for the U.S. team in 1980, but never got to compete because President Jimmy Carter boycotted those Games in Moscow in protest of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan; politics ruined four years of training for Buerkle and so many other athletes.
It was in between those two Olympiads, on Jan. 13, 1978, at the CYO Invitational held at Cole Field House on the campus of the University of Maryland, when Buerkle broke the indoor mile world record with a time of 3:54.93, defeating heavy favorite Filbert Bayi.
The story of that performance was the stuff of legend.
It was a typically miserably cold and snowy week in Buffalo leading up to the meet and Buerkle was slipping and sliding as he pounded the icy pavement around the streets of his Kenmore home.
Alan: Click on the photo below to learn more about Dick.
Alan: Click on the photo below to learn more about Dick.
He asked for permission from Joe Figliola, who at that time was the director of Memorial Auditorium, home of the Buffalo Sabres, to run in its hallways, and it was granted. He put in 10 miles one day running around the Aud, but then had to go out of town for Bausch and Lomb and continued his training in the cold outdoors for a couple days in Pennsylvania.
When it was time to fly to Maryland, his 12:30 p.m. flight from Buffalo on the day of the race – a Friday the 13th – was canceled. He was able to rebook on a 4 p.m. plane bound for Washington, D.C. which somehow was able to take off, and he got to the campus in College Park at 7:30.
“I’ve got to be crazy to fly out in a snowstorm on Friday the 13th to try for a world record,” he said to Sports Illustrated.
At first, he wasn’t allowed into the arena because even though he’d been a 1976 Olympian the man at the gate didn’t recognize him, so a meet official had to intervene.
After reportedly eating nine Oreo cookies and two peanut butter and
jelly sandwiches, Buerkle was able to get in a quick warm up, then took his place in the starters’ block at 9:05 p.m.
Less than four minutes later, the 5-foot-7, 130-pounder was a world record-holder, a title he maintained until January 1979 when Ireland’s Eamonn Coghlan shaved more than two seconds off Buerkle’s mark.
Later that year Buerkle – a 1997 inductee into the Frontier Field Walk of Fame – won the men’s Wanamaker Mile at the prestigious Millrose Games at Madison Square Garden in 3:58.4, and that victory earned him the cover of Sports Illustrated and Track and Field News. It was one of six times he ran a sub-four-minute mile in his career.
Buerkle, who was a two-time winner of the Rochester Marathon (1973, and 1975), moved from western New York to Atlanta in 1979 and he became a high school Spanish teacher and track coach. He also won the 1981 Atlanta Marathon.
“I loved growing up in Rochester,” Buerkle once told the Democrat and Chronicle. “My days at Aquinas were wonderful, but I could never get used to the cold weather.”
When he retired from running, Buerkle did a little bit of everything. He started the Dick Buerkle Running Show in Atlanta, but never got enough stations for syndication. He did some talk radio, stints as a TV reporter and newspaper journalist, and later he was a copier salesman, before finally returning to teaching.
He taught Spanish and coached track at several Atlanta-area schools, and his daughter Lily said, “He loved it. He loved coaching and he was good at it. Getting his kids to state meets and teaching them the love for running … the same large poster hung on the wall in all of his classrooms – the image of Tommie Smith and John Carlos with fists in the air on the podium during the ’68 Olympics.”
In a 1998 Buffalo News article, Buerkle shared a story about an encounter he had with President Carter a few years earlier when Buerkle was writing an occasional running column for an Atlanta-area newspaper. Knowing that Carter – a Georgia native – was a runner, he was able to score an interview with the former president, and the two men also took to the track.
“I went out to the Carter Library at Emory and we ran together during the interview,” he recounted to the News. “He didn’t know anything about me, so he asked my best time in the mile. When I told him, he stopped and just looked at me.”
Buerkle, who was a torchbearer prior to the 1992 Games in Barcelona and the 1996 Games in his adopted hometown of Atlanta, asked why Carter had boycotted the 1980 Games.
Buerkle did not share the answer, only to say that he disagreed with the reason. “He explained his reasoning to me and he remains satisfied that he was right,” Buerkle said. “At least I understood why he acted as he did.”
Buerkle is survived by his wife of 49 years, Jean; one son, Gabe; two daughters, Lily and Tera; four grandchildren; and seven siblings.
In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Respite Care Atlanta, 2715 Peachtree Road, Atlanta, GA 30305, and the Cathedral of the Christ King – Hispanic Ministry, 2699 Peachtree Rd. Atlanta, GA 30305.
Sal Maiorana can be reached at maiorana@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @salmaiorana. To get the best local news coverage, subscribe to us through these special offers at https://cm.democratandchronicle.com/specialoffer/
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