Toshiko D'Elia (néeKishimoto) (January 2, 1930 – February 19, 2014) was an American Masters athleticslong distance running legend. She was a member of the 1996 inaugural class of the Masters division of the USATFNational Track and Field Hall of Fame.[1] She holds numerous American long distance running records, primarily in the W75 age division.[2]
D'Elia was born in Kyoto, Japan.[3] As a child she suffered through near starvation food rationing and a controlling male dominated Japanese society. For example, when she received a Fulbright Scholarship to study in the United States and asked her father to pay for the trip he said that he would rather spend the money on a new horse than waste it on an education for a female.[4]
Encouraged by her mother's wishes for a better life and through determination she went after her own independence.[5] She met an orphaned deaf boy at a Catholic convent in Kyoto and from that developed a passion for educating the deaf. After graduating from Tsuda College in Tokyo, she could find no Special Education training available in post World War II Japan and came to Syracuse University in 1951 as a Fulbright Scholar. She had a brief marriage to an American, that left her as a single mother in 1955. When she tried to return to Japan with her child her father said that she had disgraced the family and must put her daughter up for adoption, but her mother gave her money to return to the U.S. and start a new life.[4] Staying in the U.S. she met and married Italian-American pianist Manfred D'Elia, who had a passion for mountain climbing, and settled in Ridgewood, New Jersey.
On a climb of Mount Rainier she suffered from altitude sickness and failed to finish the climb. After that, she began to run a mile a day with her daughter, Erica, who in 1974 was part of the first cross country team at Ridgewood High School.[6]
Following the publicity of Katherine Switzer's 1970 incident at the Boston Marathon, women's athletics were a new phenomenon. Women were just beginning to explore their limits in running.
Sometimes, ignorance was bliss. You don't know what you're in for.
This period was also the beginning of the running boom of the 1970s. Another Japanese American whom D'Elia admired, Miki Gorman, had won the Boston Marathon in 1974. Saying "26 miles is for horses to run, not people," D'Elia ran her first full marathon "by accident" at the Jersey Shore Marathon. On a freezing day when she intended to quit at 15 miles (24 km), but her support didn't show up with a change of clothing, so she kept running to the finish. Her time of 3:25 qualified her to run the Boston Marathon in 1976[6] where at the age of 46, she was the second recorded Masters female runner (after Sylvia Weiner) in the history of the event, finishing in 3:16:56 on a notoriously hot day. As a form of seeking support for other New Jersey area runners, she and her husband formed the North Jersey Masters Track and Field Club.[7][8] The following year, she ran 3:04:56, in 1978 she ran 3:04:26[9] and broke 3 hours for the first time with a 2:58:11 at age 49.[6] Each of those won the Masters division.
Later in 1979, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer, but still ran Boston in April 1980, doing 3:09:07 just 4 months after surgery. She was interviewed by a Japanese reporter after this run and was invited to speak at the Women's World Sports Symposium in Tokyo, which she did.[4] In 1980, she became the first 50-year-old woman to run under 3 hours for the marathon at the World Veteran's Marathon Champions in Glasgow, Scotland, finishing in 2:57:25.[4] For this she received the Runner's World Magazine's Paavo Nurmi Award.[4]
D'Elia became the first woman over 65 to run a sub seven-minute mile indoors. In 1996 she was inducted into the first class of the Masters division of the USATF National Track and Field Hall of Fame.[4]
D'Elia was the top runner at New York Road Runner races throughout the '70s, '80s, and '90s. She was nominated for the New York Road Runners Runner of the Year award an unprecedented 30 times, winning it 27 times. She has been featured in Sports Illustrated and is part of a permanent exhibit on running legends at the New Balance Armory in Washington Heights, NY. Mary Wittenberg referred to her as "our Queen of the Roads" and added, "She represents the best of running." She and her husband founded the running club North Jersey Masters.[4]
For six years, she nursed her husband while he suffered from Alzheimer's disease. He died in 2000.[10] The North Jersey Masters club holds an annual race on Memorial Day now named for her husband Fred.[7]
In January 2001, D'Elia broke the indoor world record for women age 70 in the 1,500-meter run with a time of 6:47:46. A few weeks later she broke records in the 800-meter, five-kilometer and 10-kilometer runs.[4]
I ran to live happily. It gave me strength. I was able to teach better, I was able to be a better wife and a better mother. . . . Running has always served me as a support and therapy for a happier life.
Toshiko d’Elia, who emerged from the destitution of postwar Japan to achieve renown in the United States as a marathon runner, taking up the sport at age 44 in the 1970s when few older women were doing so, died on Wednesday in Allendale, N.J. She was 84.
The cause was brain cancer, which was detected two months ago, her daughter, Erica Diestel, said. D’Elia, who died at her daughter’s home, lived in Ridgewood, N.J.
At 100 pounds and a little over 5 feet tall, d’Elia was a powerful runner, and a resilient one. At 49, she completed the Boston Marathon in 2 hours 58 minutes 11 seconds, shortly before she was found to have cervical cancer. Eight months later she resumed training, and eight months after that, in the world masters championship in Scotland, she ran 2:57:20, the first time a woman 50 or older had bettered three hours.
Over the years she broke many age-group records. Mary Wittenberg, the president of New York Road Runners, called her “our queen of the roads.”
D’Elia was born Toshiko Kishimoto on Jan. 2, 1930, in Kyoto, Japan. Gail Kislevitz, a friend, said she spoke of difficult times after World War II, her country defeated and largely in ruins. Ms. Kislevitz quoted her as saying: “We starved. My mother would stand on food lines all day and come home with a cucumber to feed a family of six. I dreamed of being a bird so I could fly away.”
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Mrs. d'Elia running in the Ridgewood Run in 2006.CreditNorth Jersey Masters
Her path to the United States began with an accident at a Roman Catholic convent, where she was helping out as an interpreter. As she told The New York Times in 1977, one day an 18-year-old deaf youth who did odd jobs for the nuns fell from a ladder and began screaming in pain. Suddenly she realized he had a voice and took an interest in teaching the deaf.
She went on to study special education for the deaf in Tokyo at Tsuda College, an institution for women, and won a Fulbright scholarship to study at Syracuse University, accepting the invitation despite her tradition-bound father’s refusal to help pay her way to the United States. As she recalled, he said he would rather spend money on a new automobile than a daughter’s education.
She earned a master’s degree in audiology at Syracuse, married and had her daughter in the United States.
Her husband soon left her, however, and she returned to Japan with the child, then 6 months old. Her father said her failed marriage had disgraced the family and told her to put her daughter up for adoption, but her mother gave her money to return to the United States with the baby.
D’Elia went on to teach for many years at the New York School for the Deaf in White Plains.
For years, d’Elia and her second husband, Manfred d’Elia, climbed mountains in the United States and around the world, including Fujiyama in Japan, Damavand in Iran and the Matterhorn in Switzerland. While climbing Monte Rosa in Switzerland, she tumbled into a crevasse, was hauled out by her fellow climbers and finished the ascent.
She and her husband took up running to build climbing strength and endurance: for her, it was a mile every morning at 5 o’clock.
Her serious running career also began by accident. The Ridgewood High School girls’ track team was preparing for a spring cross-country meet, and her daughter, Erica, the team’s captain, did not want any Ridgewood High runners to finish last.
“So my daughter tricked me into running it,” d’Elia told an interviewer. “The kids took off real fast from the start. I paced myself, and I came in third. Erica, who finished first, was standing there, and I could hear her screaming, ‘Oh, my God, that’s my mother.’ ”
Her first marathon was in 1976, in ice and snow in New Jersey. She had planned to run only the first half of the race; a friend’s husband was to pick her up at that point and give her a ride home. When he failed to show, she decided to finish the race, and she did so in 3:25, qualifying her for the Boston Marathon. By 1977, she was running 90 miles a week and winning long-distance races as well as sprinting events in 40-years-and-over competitions.
Manfred d’Elia, a classical pianist and piano teacher, was an accomplished runner himself as well as a prominent conservationist in New Jersey and a founder of hiking groups and the Opera Society of Northern New Jersey. He died in 2000.
Besides her daughter, d’Elia is survived by three grandsons, two stepdaughters and four step-grandchildren.
Despite having open-heart surgery when she was 78, d’Elia kept running, until December, around when her brain cancer was diagnosed.
“She was in the pool every day at 7 a.m.,” her daughter said on Wednesday. “She swam a mile and ran in the water for 45 minutes. Then there was a yoga class. Then she came home for lunch and a nap. Then, in the afternoon, she ran three to five miles. That was her day, until the day she couldn’t.”
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