V 12 N. 62 Don Gehrmann , Wisconsin Middle Distance Great Dies at Age 94

   Don Gehrmann at Drake Relays

from Cowles Library Archives Drake University

It wasn't just Queen Elizabeth whose death is making headlines.  Don Gehrmann passed away recently in July.  Their age spans were almost identical.  Liz had about two years on Don.  I've seen a lot of articles about Don Gehrmann over the years but don't think we've ever published an article about him.  

A few years ago I received an envelope full of clippings from Paul O'Shea who writes most of our book reviews.  We've gotten to know each other through this blog and have a very cordial relationship that was enhanced by Paul's good friend Thomas Coyne.  Both men are from the Chicago area and attended St. Ignatius HS in the late 1940's and early 1950's.  They also became closely connected with Western Michigan University in their careers.   

The contents of that envelope were news clippings from 1950 and 1951 concerning the Boston Marathon and the 1950-51 indoor track season highlighting many of the races of Don Gehrmann and Fred Wilt.  I've attached most of them below.  Gehrmann and Wilt were really the kings of the indoor track season with their many head to head races, the accounts of which I'm sure the serious track nut will enjoy.  

I've also included some clippings of the Chicago Public and Catholic high school cross country meets in which both Paul and Thomas were right up there with the leaders.  Thomas was the captain of the winning Catholic team St. Ignatius.   Years ago we had an article about St. Ignatius and a meet in Washington DC that both men attended with another distinguished alum  Tom O'Hara.  

St. Ignatius on Once Upon a Time in the Vest

From The New York Times:

 

Don Gehrmann, Whose Victory in a Mile Took 314 Days, Dies at 94

After a dead-heat finish in the 1950 Wanamaker Mile in New York and a series of yes-no-yes rulings, he was finally declared the winner almost a year later.

Published Sept. 7, 2022Updated Sept. 9, 2022, 12:20 a.m. ET

Don Gehrmann, left, crossing the finish line with Fred Wilt at the 1950 Wanamaker Mile race at Madison Square Garden. Almost a year later, after much dispute, Gehrmann was declared the winner. Bettmann, via Getty Images

Don Gehrmann, a celebrated American runner who won a major one-mile race — the 1950 Wanamaker Mile — that took almost 11 months to decide, died on July 23 in a nursing home in Madison, Wis. He was 94.

His son Jim on Wednesday confirmed the death, which was not widely reported at the time.

In a college career at the University of Wisconsin from 1946 to 1950, Gehrmann won 87 of 99 races from a half-mile to two miles. From 1948 to 1951, he won 39 consecutive major mile races indoors and outdoors. His winning streak included four victories (1949-52) in the Wanamaker Mile in the Millrose Games, then held in Madison Square Garden.

In the 1950 Wanamaker Mile, on Jan. 28, Gehrmann seemed to catch Fred Wilt at the tape, or did he? Both first-place judges said Wilt had won. Both second-place judges said Wilt had finished second. The finish-line picture from the phototimer was inadvertently blocked by a judge. And so it was left to the chief judge, Asa Bushnell, who was at the finish line, to make the call. He declared Gehrmann the winner, with a time of 4 minutes, 9.3. seconds.

But that did not settle the matter. Wilt, an F.B.I. agent when not competing and a future inductee of the National Track & Field Hall of Fame, protested, and 13 days later the Metropolitan Amateur Athletic Union’s registration committee, reversing Bushnell, declared him the winner.

Then Gehrmann protested that decision, and the matter carried over almost a year later to the A.A.U.’s national convention in Washington. By a vote of 314 to 108 — 314 days after the race — that ruling body’s board of governors upheld the chief judge’s decision and declared Gehrmann, forevermore, the victor.

Some were skeptical. As Howard Schmertz, the Millrose Games’ assistant meet director in 1950, told The New York Times in 2011, “The final decision was made by maybe a dozen people who saw the race and a few hundred who didn’t.”

At 5-foot-10 and 134 pounds, Gehrmann, recognizable by his eyeglasses, won three N.C.A.A. mile or 1,500-meter championships outdoors and two A.A.U. 1,000-yard titles indoors. He won a record 12 Big Ten titles in indoor track, outdoor track and cross-country and in 1950 was voted the Big Ten’s best runner in its first 50 years.

In the 1948 Olympics in London, at age 20, he was the only non-European to reach the 1,500-meter final. He finished somewhere between seventh and 10th (the record books disagree).

In 1952, less than an hour after he had broken the world 1,000-yard outdoor record in London, Gehrmann was sitting in the stands and watching the rest of the meet. He had just downed hot dogs and a soda when the only American in the quarter-mile decided that he could not run because of an injury. Gehrmann rushed to the track, ran the race and beat the best English runners, winning in 47.9 seconds.

As he told the website Gary Cohen Running in 2011, “That may have been my greatest accomplishment.” It was his last in the sport: In the 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.

“The big differences between milers now and yesterday is mental, not physical,” he said. “We didn’t train real hard in those days, but we didn’t have to. We could win without it.

“I wonder sometimes how I would have done running today, all things being equal,” he added, recalling his amateur status. “I would probably be a millionaire.”

Frank Litsky, a longtime sportswriter for The Times, died in 2018. Alex Traub contributed reporting.

Following are those clippings I referred to in the first paragraph.

                      Don McEwen, Michigan All American beats Gehrmann  in Big Ten XC

Now here are those Chicago high school cross country results about 1950.  
 

Thomas Coyne far left receiving team trophy as his team captain

Small article above photo Paul O'Shea finished 7th in Central AAU intermediate novice class.

Interestingly in this clipping an injured runner Charles Bowers is mentioned

and his home address is given.  Wow, we'd never see that today unless he put

it on Facebook himself.

I first met Tom Coyne in September of l949 while he was circling the dirt yard of St. Ignatius High School in Chicago.  After two days of tryouts I had been cut from the frosh football team, and joined the road more traveled, the cross country team.  After two years at St. Ignatius, where I won the Catholic League Senior 880 title, I transferred to a public high school near my home, so I could, among other things, run in the state championships.  I did qualify in my junior year, by running around Lake Ellyn, finishing third in the regionals.
My idiot coach decided we would drive 150 miles to Peoria before the state meet that morning.  I literally finished last or next to last out of about 150 runners.

From Joe Rogers former Ball State and US Military Academy coach:

I just wanted to comment on the blog.  I really enjoyed the article on Jack Bachelor.  Jack was a teammate at Miami.  There is an interesting story on how he got into running.  The summer before his senior year his buddies had challenged him to a race around the block.  He beat them all who were mostly cross country runners.   They then talked him into running cross country that year.   He did well in the Michigan State Meet in one year of running. His high school coach was the long time successful HS coach, Kermit Ambrose. Our coach at Miami, Bob Epskamp, who was from Michigan, recruited him.  He made All American in the Steeple chase in '66.  In 1964, our sophomore year, Bob Schul came back to school and then went on the win the gold in Tokyo in the 5000.  Because of his height, the team called him "Stick".   He also had a great sense of humor and was often cutting jokes.  

Also, I had the privilege of becoming close to Fred Wilt.  After retiring from the FBI in the early 70's, he coached the women at Purdue.  He had live in Lafayette during his FBI career.  Originally, a farm boy from Pendleton, Indiana.   He had gone to Indiana Central College (Now the University of Indianapolis) to play basketball.  The coach had them run cross country and in the fall of his freshman year he ran in the Old Big State-Little State Cross Country meet against Billy Hayes Indiana University team.  He beat them and Billy talked him into transferring to IU.  There under Hayes' coaching he became and All American.  He always credited Hayes as having him train with interval training which he had not done before.  His battles with Gehrmann were when his was working for the FBI in his early career.  

In any event, it was a joy reading this issue.  Thanks.

Joe Rogers

I wonder what the FBI had to do in west central Indiana in the 1950's.  I don't think there were too many subversives out there. But J.Edgar Hoover was looking everywhere.  If Mommy was a Commie then you had to turn her in.  The father of one of my 5th grade classmates got 6 years for falsely signing a non-communist affidavit.  

George

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