With sadness and appreciation, we remember Dwight Pierson, who died at age 84 in Lake City on June 1st. In 1969, Dwight founded the Rochester Track Club and was soon joined by a few other athletes from the Junior College. In August of 1969, RTC formally organized with Glenn Amundsen named president, Dwight as Vice-President, and Carol Geerdes as Secretary.
While the club was recently renamed Rochester Running Club, the original name was fitting for the times: Dwight’s influence and RTC leadership provided training and competition opportunities for running as well as numerous field events, including high and low hurdles, high jump, pole vault and shot put. Safety reasons eliminated all but running and long jump events long before we became members, but it’s possible the shot-put balls are still in the equipment shed. Joann Johnson recalls the pole vault landing pit as an air bag inflated by a fan – a far cry from current safety standards. They invited high school and college athletes to participate in meets at Soldiers Field. Sometimes buses would come here. RTC would also travel to compete at other meets, including the Governor’s Meet and Junior Olympics.
John Resman, a running buddy to Dwight and family friend, has happy memories and an appreciation for all Dwight did for the Rochester running community. Joann remembers Dwight was always involved in road races.
Jerry Goodrich and Roger Spee shared good memories of Dwight. Roger met Dwight after moving to Rochester in 1978 and becoming involved in coordinating one of the races. He saw first hand how much Dwight and Shirley had done to support the regional running community, through organization, volunteerism and mentoring younger runners and leaders. Roger said Dwight “always had a smile, rye sense of humor and .. Shirley”.
Dwight & early days of All Comers meets at Soldiers Field Track
Distance running became Dwight’s passion as it gained increasing popularity in later years.
Eleven years after RTC was formed, at our first annual RTC banquet, Dwight was honored and recognized as the first recipient of the `Dwight Pierson` lifetime award for distinguished service to the club and the community.
Dwight is survived by his wife, Shirley, daughters Linda, Nancy and Andrea, three grandchildren, a great grandson. Dwight worked at IBM for 25 years before retiring with Shirley in Lake City. In addition to founding Rochester Track Club, he completed 25 marathons and numerous other distance races. It is easy to imagine hearing great stories from Dwight if we’d had the opportunity.
A special thank you to grandson, Camilo, for providing the photos and some of the history for this article.