Don R. Gerlach

Funeral services will be on Wednesday, January 31, 2024 at 11:00 am at Harvard United Methodist Church in Harvard, Nebraska. Burial with Military Rites will follow at Harvard Cemetery. Per Don's wishes there will be no viewing or visitation. Apfel Funeral Home is in care of the family. Online condolences can be sent to www.apfelfuneralhome.com.

Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Akron since 1994 was gathered to his Father’s on January 15, 2024. The only child of Ralph R. Gerlach and Evelyn L. Bischoff, he was born on a farm near Harvard, Nebraska on June 9, 1932, where his grandparents settled in 1904 and where his father was also born. Gerlach was deprived of his mother before he was four and was raised by his father and paternal grandparents whose house and farm he retained with many fond memories.

Gerlach proceeded from the Harvard Schools to earn bachelor’s in 1954, master’s in 1956, and doctoral degree in 1961 at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. He was awarded fellowships for his graduate degrees and a Fulbright Scholarship at the University of London, England in 1956-57. He spent two years in the U.S. Army from 1958 to 1960 with a tour of duty in Korea where he worked in an education center at the 1^st Cavalry Division Headquarters and taught history in the University of Maryland Overseas Program. In 1958 he was confirmed by the Anglican Bishop in Korea at the Cathedral of St. Mary and St. Nicholas in Seoul; like his mother’s death, the Fulbright Scholarship including tours in Europe, this was a major turning point in his life.

Following receipt of the doctoral degree in 1961 Gerlach was an instructor in history at his alma mater and then was appointed assistant professor at the University of Akron where he was subsequently promoted to associate professor and professor. The author of a number of booklets and articles in various historical journals and three books on American Revolutionary General Philip Schuyler of New York, he also contributed articles to Oxford University Press’s American National Biography (on Schuyler, and Samuel Johnson of Connecticut), Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment, and Syracuse University Press’s Encyclopedia of New York State. The Syracuse Press awarded him the John Ben Snow prize for his book Proud Patriot: Philip Schuyler and The War of Independence (1987) and the University of Akron Alumni Association gave him its Outstanding Researcher Award in 1988.

Gerlach was a member of several historical associations and was elected a member of the Royal Historical Society in England. Active in the University of Akron’s governing bodies, he served in the University Council and became first chairman of the University Senate in 1993-94, which he also served as parliamentarian from 1994-2002, and again as senator; a member for the Association of University of Akron Retirees. An ardent advocate of faculty rights and responsibilities, he fought to maintain high academic standards and degree requirements.

Gerlach was a founding member of St. Mary’s Anglican Catholic Church in Akron in 1977, where he was a lay reader, successively clerk of the vestry, Junior and Senior Warden until 2010. He was also Provincial Historiographer (Archivist), of the Anglican Catholic Church and watched church archives for the Province and the Diocese of the Midwest at the University of Akron’s American Historical Research Center. A regular delegate to the Diocesan and Provincial Synod of the Church, he taught at Holyrood Seminary from 1983-84 and 1997, and served on The Seminary Board of Governors from 1993-2001.

A loyal Nebraskan and dedicated Republican, Gerlach was fond of reading, especially biography, theology, historical novels, and mysteries. He especially enjoyed repeated travels in Great Britain, Europe, and the Caribbean. His paternal and maternal forebears were all Germans: Hessians, Baden-Württembergers, Bavarians, who emigrated to the United States between the 1840s and 1890s. (The Gerlach’s were Hessians who migrated to the Volga River in the 1760s before coming to America in 1886). Gerlach’s grandparents came to the United States from Norka, Russia, a town on the Volga River, and he spent over half of his life (to 2010) in Akron, Ohio (which is NORKA spelled backwards!) After 48 years in Akron, Ohio, he returned to his Nebraska birthplace in September of 2010.

Proud of his heritage and the county who gave his ancestors asylum from the turmoil of the Old World, he was grateful for all the blessings he enjoyed as an academician and participant in the struggle to maintain the principle of Christian Orthodoxy.