Since 1851, obituaries in The New York Times have been dominated by white men. With Overlooked, we’re adding the stories of remarkable people whose deaths went unreported in The Times.

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Miki Gorman was sitting alone at a corner table of a Magic Pan restaurant in Manhattan on Oct. 23, 1976, when her food arrived: not one, but two large crepes stuffed with mushroom and spinach souffle.

A couple sitting nearby gawked at her. Gorman, at 5 feet tall or so, weighed only 90 pounds, and the plates of food covered her table.

“I’m running the New York City Marathon tomorrow!” she told them. “And I’m going to win.”

And so she did, the first woman to cross the finish line the next day. Even more, she won again the following year. No other American woman would take the title for the next four decades.

“We’ve gone so long without winning, I can’t believe it,” Gorman told The Washington Post in 2004, long after her retirement in 1982. “My win was a lifetime ago.”