Walter Teutsch was born in Germany in 1929, went to the United Kingdom in 1939 on kindertransport, and has been in Israel since 1953. After a career in financial management and internal auditing in large Israeli companies, he became active on retirement in a number of voluntary organizations and took up long-distance running. In 2008, he fell when running competitively and since been confined to a wheelchair as a quasi-tetraplegic.