After two years in the Army, he was admitted to the state bar in 1961 and opened a private law practice in Brooklyn. He worked mostly on negligence cases.
Aware of the city’s shortage of track facilities for the young, and particularly concerned about limited girls’ participation in intramural and interscholastic sports activities, Mr. Thompson followed his aunt’s advice to become involved. He became a civilian volunteer with the Police Athletic League and then founded the Atoms Track Club. Soon he had dozens of members.
“Most of them are not from circumstances and surroundings that you would call ideal,” he told The Times. “They have home problems, social problems, boy problems and many other problems. You can’t just sweep these under the rug if you want to see them develop their talents and succeed in life. So I involve myself.”
A decade later, in 1972, the landmark federal legislation known as Title IX, which banned sex discrimination in any educational program receiving federal funds, became law. It was the beginning of a sea change for female athletes. Before the law, about 310,000 girls and women in America were participating in high school and college sports. Today, federal officials say, there are 3.3 million.
Mr. Thompson, who handled legal cases for ABC-TV, the Federal Trade Commission and Madison Square Garden and was an assistant state attorney general from 1967 to 1969, gave up law practice in 1974, when he became the full-time paid director of the Colgate Women’s Games. Sponsored by Colgate-Palmolive, the games have been a huge, complex operation, often attracting as many as 20,000 competitors of all ages.
He remained the coach of the Atoms until after the turn of the century, when its membership began to dwindle, and directed the Colgate Women’s Games for 40 years until his retirement in 2014.
Mr. Thompson, whose brother died some years ago, leaves no immediate survivors. He had Alzheimer’s disease in recent years but remained at his home in Brooklyn, cared for by Ms. Forde, one of his best and most devoted former runners. A sprinter from Barbados, she competed in the 1972 and 1976 Summer Olympics and in the 1975 Pan American Games.
“Fred Thompson is one of those special people that a sport such as track and field needs,” the Times columnist Dave Anderson wrote in 1979. “In the big money sports, a coach can always dream of going on to a lucrative career in college or in the pros. In track and field, there is no big money as there is in football or basketball. In track and field, the love of the sport is true; the dream is pure.”
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