As he told the website Gary Cohen Running in 2011, “That may have been my greatest accomplishment.” It was one of his last in the sport because, in that era before there was professional track, he retired from running later that year to earn a living.
After earning a bachelor’s degree in education and a master’s in educational psychology, Gehrmann worked in public relations and later taught at a high school in Wauwatosa, Wis., a suburb of Milwaukee, and coached its track and cross country teams. He was a school administrator, educational consultant and a highway safety coordinator for the Wisconsin state government before retiring in 1985.
Donald Arthur Gehrmann was born on Nov. 16, 1927, in Milwaukee to Frank and Mamie (Stremke) Gehrmann. He grew up on the south side of town and attended Pulaski High School, where he learned to run indoors on his high school’s slippery gymnasium floor, and where he met Dolores Marine, known as Lori, whom he married in 1950. She died in 2016.
Gehrmann is survived by three sons, Don, Tim and Jim; two daughters, Kathy Gordon and Sue Newton; 14 grandchildren; 22 great-grandchildren; and two great-great grandchildren. He lived in Sun Prairie, Wis.
Gehrmann’s fastest mile was 4:7.5 seconds, pedestrian for leading runners now, but he said he never ran for time, just to win. (In 1954, Roger Bannister of England became the first to run the mile in under four minutes.)
In a 1976 interview with United Press International, Gehrmann described how the sport, by then having gone professional, had changed. He recalled that for his workouts he had usually run just 2 ¼ miles, that his pre-meet meal had usually consisted of a hamburger, French fries and soda pop, and that the cinder tracks he had run on stole a lot of energy.
