This story was originally published on March 18, 2015.
My posts were added on April 15, 2026.
This story of Fr. Ank Litsky tells James Dunaway, that Editor of American Racing and Sports Only from 2003 to 2014. James also edited Coaching athletics for my company, Fortius Media Group, LLC.
I met for the first time James Dunaway, over the phone in 1982 when I had to call James from my job Runner’s World. James asked me if I knew who he was. I said no; He answered: “I’m the best running writer.” I’m laughing now; I was horrified then. James had this. “don’t mess with me” tenor to his voice.
James Dunaway was my mentor and friend. started our phone calls when he was my editor saying, James once lectured me about a conversation I had with my teenage son, Adam, when Adam and I had an argument. James was right and I apologized to James and my son.
James died on March 15, 2015. H. had not been feeling well for several weeks. I miss him and the deceased Bert Rosenthal of the AP every day On my desk I have some of James’s Christmas cards featuring James and his son David.
To read James Dunaway stories, type James Dunaway stories into our Search bar. His stories are indeed predictable, eleven years after his death.
The following article was sent to us by former New York Times columnist Frank Litsky, a longtime colleague and friend of James Dunaway, who died on Sunday, March 15, 2015, after a long and colorful career in sports journalism.
An IAAF obituary described James Dunaway as “the doyen of athletics journalists”. James Dunaway would relish that description, but also say it’s undeserved.
That would be one of the many things I disagreed with him about.
The picture below is James Dunaway from the 1960s. This is one of my favorite pictures of James.
Thanks to Frank Litsky for his story and the Armory Foundation for permission to reprint.
James Dunaway, photo courtesy of USA Track & Field
DUNAWAY:
By Frank Litsky
James Dunaway’s track and field credentials are overwhelming. He covered 13 consecutive Olympic Games (1956-2008), all but one World Outdoor Championships between 1983 and 2007 (he missed one because he was going home to Texas), at least 53 NCAA Outdoor Championships, more than 100 AAU-TAC-USATF National Championships and Dr. than he can count. He never ran, jumped, threw or officiated at those meetings, yet he always had the best seat in the house.
He got there with a press credential and an old Royal portable typewriter (and later a laptop). He was a prolific reporter who covered track and field and other sports, almost always on a freelance basis. The New York TimesUnited Press International, ABC-TV, breaking news, and many other outlets.
Was an oriental editor Subsequent news From 1963 to 2004, he became an editor American track and field In 2004, he wrote over 200 magazine articles on a variety of topics, not just on the track. Q:message appeared The New York Times, Sports Illustrated, Reader’s Digest, Esquire, MediaWeek:, Advertising age, FIRE WEEK, Runner’s World:, The Runner:, American track and Field, breaking news, and many other publications.
One of his books “The Sports Illustrated “Book track. running events” (Lippincott, 1968), sold over 100,000 copies and was in print for 20 years. Several coaches have called it the best book of its kind ever, and it’s still a top seller on the Internet.
He also wrote “Four Minute Mile, 1954-1967” a self-published, $1 book with incredible details about the first 14 years of the four-minute mile. It served as a track stats dream. The review Sports Illustrated Titled “Disappointed Five-Minute Miler Collects Facts About Four-Minute Miles.” In fact, the headline was “He Was a Diligent but Unsophisticated Runner, and His Fastest Mile 5:48 a.m“.
His peers twice elected him president of the Light-Field Writers of America (TAFWA). He served the organization, the most important in American track, from 1999 to 2002 and again from 2005 to 2007. He was the longtime secretary of the New York Track Writers Association, an organization that helped keep the sport alive in the East at a time when many major indoor and outdoor meets were closing.
TAFWA honored him with its award in 1996 Jesse Abramson Award for outstanding writing. In 1980, his exclusive stories about how the Soviets cheated to win five gold medals at the Moscow Olympics were a journalistic coup.
If all this work seems excessive, Mr. Dunaway keeps working and keeps writing, and the trailer world is all the better for it.
In 2010, he was elected to the National Track and Field Hall of Fame, only the second non-magazine journalist to be so honored. (The first was the same Jesse Abramson New York Herald Tribune)
Dunaway was stunned by his Hall of Fame selection.
“I called myself an amateur,” he said. “My day job was something else. You have to understand that this was my hobby, so when people said I should be in the Hall of Fame, I said, “Please don’t nominate me!”
He was nominated and elected, a fitting tribute to a man who logically should have been doing something else. He received a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Penn State in 1949. He became an advertising copywriter and served such corporate giants as General Electric, DuPont, Kellogg wheat, Procter & Gamble and Palmolive soap. Late he spent 19 years Newspaper Advertising Bureau, the last 10 as vice president of information and serving as newspaper industry spokesperson.
As a young man in the 1950s, his first residence in New York was a rent-managed apartment on East 93rd.th Street for $3 a month. In the early 60s, he lived near Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. “5 E st 51St A street,’ he said, ‘directly in front of the aisle of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.’ A dedicated jazz fan, Dunaway spent many nights at 52’s favorite clubs during those years.th A street frequented by legendary jazz venues such as Three Deuces, The Famous Door and Downbeat.
James O’Dwyer Dunaway was born on August 17, 1927 in Houston. His love affair with athletics began as a college student, and he befriended famous runners such as Horace Ashenfelter, later Olympic sprint champion; Curt Stone, later All-American Games Champion; and Jim Gerdes, a hurdler and later coach at the Naval Academy and Penn State. After college, he worked for a year and a half, saved $1,000, quit, went to Europe, had a good time, and came back half a year later with $5.50 in his pocket.
He got another job, but in 1956 he took a year off to see the Melbourne Olympics. He had little money, but through his father, who worked for Texaco, he got free rides on slow trucks. Olympic journalism credentials were easy to obtain. Still, he barely had any journalism practice, though writing advertising copy got him started.
To make money Dunaway invented Hometown featuresnews agency, which would provide American newspapers with Olympic stories about hometown heroes, and requested 34 papers. As he remembered.
“There was a problem. I had never written a news story in my life. Those sports editors, on the other hand, didn’t know that. I had no doubts about my ability to do the job, but I didn’t want to lie about my qualifications. So I printed a sheet like I was a freelance journalist, and I wrote a letter for years that looked like I was writing about sports.”
Five of those papers hired him to be their man in Melbourne and write about a local athlete who made c. The Oklahoma City paper was so impressed with his performance that it agreed to use him only if he, and not any of his staff, wrote the stories.
He assured the newspaper that he will do the work himself. It was easy because he had no employers. He was a one-man show and did so well that he went on to write future Olympics for newspapers and magazines in the United States, Italy and Australia.; Esquire and other magazines; television, the Internet and the IAAF.
Later in the Olympics and elsewhere, well into his 80s, he wrote for almost everyone, always with authority.
He drove from his home in Homestead, New Jersey, and Austin, Texas, at the end of the year to write about meetings in Eugene, Philadelphia, Des Moines, and just about everywhere else. He would cover half of the country in one night’s stay. Although he paid his own travel expenses, room and board, his biggest motivation was not to make money, but to be concise. Along the way, he brought his love and wisdom to newspapers in New York, Chicago, Eugene, Des Moines, Houston, Fort Worth, Austin, Baltimore and points in between.
Additionally, he served as a sports historian and consultant for ABC Sports. Sports Illustrated, world of runners the runner and: The New York Times.
He did it mostly for the love of a sport he gave so much to, and which gave him so much. The task was not easy.
“The sport of athletics is very difficult,” he said. “It’s like 14 different sports and you have to know a lot. But it still has vitality. I love it. I just spent a lot of money on travel, a lot of time, but I did some good things.”
