LEBOW, FRED

LEBOW, FRED (Ephraim Fishl Lebowitz; 1932–1994), founder and director of the New York City Marathon, member of U.S. National Track and Field Hall of Fame and National Distance Running Hall of Fame. Lebow was born in Arad, a town in the Transylvania region of western Romania, the sixth of seven children in a Yiddish-speaking family. After surviving Nazi occupation in World War II, Lebow and his family escaped the country in different directions. Lebow, then a teenager, made his way as a smuggler of sugar and diamonds through Czechoslovakia, Belgium, and Ireland before reaching a yeshivah in Brooklyn, N.Y. in 1951. After stops in Kansas City and Cleveland, he returned to New York and worked in the garment district, attending the Fashion Institute of Technology and marketing clothes as owner of his own knockoff design company. Lebow took up running in the late 1960s to improve his stamina for tennis, became involved with the New York Road Runners Club, and staged the first NYC Marathon, in 1970. As president of the NY Road Runners Club and race director of the New York City Marathon, Lebow fostered the race's growth from 126 runners looping around Central Park in 1970, to 35,000 entrants from more than 100 countries and all 50 states running through New York's five boroughs in 2005. Lebow, who spoke a heavily-accented English, would shout in Yiddish to ḥasidic spectators, "Lommen heren" ("Let's hear it") and "Die laufer darfen vasser" ("The runners need water") as he led his pack of runners through the streets of ḥasidic Williamsburg. To accommodate the needs of Jewish runners, Lebow set up a tent for Morning Prayer services at the marathon staging area. He also changed permanently the   starting date of the New York Marathon, so as not to conflict with a Jewish holiday. Lebow created such original events as the Fifth Avenue Mile; the Empire State Building Run-up; the L'eggs mini-marathon, the first women's-only long distance running event in the world; the New York Games, an international outdoor track-and-field meet; and reintroduced the Six-Day Run in New York. Lebow served as president of the New York Road Runners for 20 years, before being promoted to chairman in 1993. He was elected to the National Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1994 and the National Distance Running Hall of Fame in 2001. Lebow co-authored the book Inside the World of Big-Time Marathoning (1983), and is the subject of Ron Rubin's Anything for a T-Shirt: Fred Lebow and the New York City Marathon, the World's Greatest Footrace (2004). (Elli Wohlgelernter (2nd ed.)