Fresh from competing in the mile race at the National Wheelchair Games outside Spokane, Wash., in June 1974, Bob Hall set his sights on a marathon.
Still comparatively new to wheelchair events, he sought advice from legendary distance running guru Bill Squires, who had coached track at Mr. Hall’s alma mater, Boston State College.
“I went to Billy Squires and told him what I wanted to do,” Mr. Hall said in a 1975 Boston Globe interview, the day after completing his groundbreaking first Boston Marathon. “He was great about it. He knew I was sincere. I told him I wanted to train for track and field just like the other runners did. So he told me how to go about it.”
That Squires-inspired training helped Mr. Hall win the first national wheelchair marathon championship, in August 1974 in Toledo, Ohio, with a time of 2:54:05. Then he asked Boston Marathon race director Will Cloney to let him join runners at the starting line in 1975.
“Will said that if I finished the race in under three hours, he’d give me the same certificate of accomplishment that he gives every runner who breaks three hours,” said Mr. Hall, who finished in 2:58, becoming the Boston Marathon’s first sanctioned wheelchair competitor.
Mr. Hall, whose historic wins in the ’75 and ’77 Boston Marathons helped open races around the world to athletes of all abilities, died Sunday of complications from pneumonia while in hospice care at Mount Auburn Hospital. He was 74 and had lived for many years in Watertown.
Along with his pioneering participation in the Boston Marathon and his key role creating wheelchair divisions, Mr. Hall helped open the New York City Marathon to wheelchair athletes by filing a discrimination lawsuit in the late 1970s.
His lifelong advocacy for expanding access to athletic events included increasing the range of options available to athletes by designing and manufacturing equipment for use in competitions.
Those innovations were inspired in part by his early experiences.
“My hands are a little sore because I had to do so much braking. I had to cut in and out of a lot of runners,” he told the Globe after finishing his first Boston Marathon in a borrowed racing wheelchair.
“Bob was one of the key leaders in our field back in an era when wheelchair racing was being established as a legitimate sport,” said Dr. Cheri Blauwet, a two-time winner of the Boston Marathon women’s wheelchair division.
Blauwet, who formerly chaired the Boston Athletic Association’s Board of Governors, noted that for athletes too young to remember his accomplishments in the 1970s and ’80s, “you might not know who Bob Hall was, but you might be racing in a Bob Hall chair — or your friend might be.”
Mr. Hall’s New Hall’s Wheels company helped move competition equipment from modified hospital wheelchairs into the era of three-wheeled titanium and carbon-fiber models.
The company’s offerings included racing chairs, mono-ski chairs, chairs for ice hockey, and hand cycles. The Museum of Modern Art in New York City highlighted his design excellence by displaying one of his early racing chairs.
At the 2025 Boston Marathon, Mr. Hall joined four-time Boston Marathon winner Bill Rodgers, 1975’s overall winner, to serve as grand marshals.
Jack Fleming, president and chief executive of the BAA, said the honor was a fitting and timely tribute to Mr. Hall on the 50th anniversary of his first Boston Marathon victory.
“There can only be one first in anything,” Fleming said of Mr. Hall’s role opening marathons in Boston and beyond to athletes who use wheelchairs. “There was nothing, and he had a vision, and then it became something. He saw it before anybody else could see it.”
Marcel Hug of Switzerland, who recorded his eighth Boston Marathon victory in the men’s wheelchair division in 2025, raced in a Hall-designed wheelchair early in his career.
“I had the honor to meet Bob Hall and speak to him,” Hug said after the race. “I’m very grateful and thankful for what he did. He opened the door for us that we can participate here.”
Blauwet recalled with a laugh that Hug “was fanboying” Mr. Hall. “Marcel handed me his cellphone and asked me to take a picture of him with Bob. He wanted a photo of him with the legend.”
Mr. Hall was born in Cambridge on Oct. 31, 1951, and grew up in Belmont, the second of six siblings.
His mother, Anna Higbee Hall, was a homemaker, and his father, Edmund Hall, worked in banks.
Contracting polio before turning 1, Mr. Hall lost full use of his legs. He managed sports teams at Belmont High School and began competing in wheelchair basketball at Boston State College, from which he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in teaching.
At a South Boston race, Mr. Hall met Jane Raymond. They married in 1987 and, together, began opening races to wheelchair athletes.
“We used to show up to local races back in the late ’80s and early ’90s and make a division, when people didn’t want wheelchairs,” said Raymond-Hall, who has worked for the state in budget and finance jobs and first competed in the Boston Marathon wheelchair division in 1991.
She said her husband was strongly involved in disability rights advocacy all his life, through activities such as overseeing the Boston Marathon wheelchair division and his involvement with other organizations.
“He just felt that he couldn’t stop — he couldn’t stop saying things about injustices and disability rights,” she said. “And disability rights are having a hard time again. You just can’t give up fighting for your right to live what other people say are normal lives.”
In addition to his wife, Mr. Hall leaves three sisters, Jeanne Galambos of Billerica, Rosemary Rikeman of Winchester, and Susanne Griffin of Hingham; and a brother, John, of Waltham.
Family and friends will gather to remember Mr. Hall from 4 to 7 p.m. Thursday in Nardone Funeral Home in Watertown. Burial will be private.
Throughout his career Mr. Hall used his increasing renown to raise awareness and funds for organizations, including through the Bob Hall Legacy Fund.
The organization’s REquipment program “supports day-to-day independence of individuals with disabilities by providing free, durable medical equipment in Massachusetts,” his wife said.
In 1980, Mr. Hall and Dave McGillivray, a Boston Marathon senior race adviser, joined to travel by foot and by wheelchair from Winter Haven, Fla., to the marathon’s finish line at the Prudential Center — a trek that stretched more than 1,500 miles over five weeks.
With a goal of raising money and awareness for the Jimmy Fund, their trip included drenched days on rainy, forlorn roads and a private White House visit with President Jimmy Carter.
“He took it in stride,” McGillivray said of Mr. Hall’s ability to log 40 or more miles a day in his wheelchair, while also taking on the trip’s highs and lows. “He felt grateful that he could do this and he wanted to give back.”
Mr. Hall was called “the father of wheelchair racing” when he became a 1991 inductee into Move United’s National Adaptive Sports Hall of Fame.
In 2025, the BAA presented him the Dick & Rick Hoyt Award, named for the late and iconic father and son who pioneered duo wheelchair road racing.
Mr. Hall took a modest approach to the accolades he received, including being hailed, after-the-fact, as the Boston Marathon’s first official wheelchair competitor.
“I never thought about being recognized,” he told the Globe before the 2025 marathon. “It was always about doing the job and doing the job correctly. I never gave it a thought. Actually, I really enjoyed the ride.”
Bryan Marquard can be reached at bryan.marquard@globe.com.