Herbert P. Douglas, whose insatiable forward-leaning positivity earned him Olympic glory and exemplified professional excellence, altruism and philanthropy to generations of Pittsburghers and Americans, died Saturday, University of Pittsburgh athletics announced. He was 101.
From former university administrators to those still involved within the athletic department, numerous people who knew Mr. Douglas have spent the past days reflecting on the impact he left both at his alma mater and his community.
“In every role that he filled, as an aspiring athlete from Hazelwood, as a student-athlete and University trustee and as an esteemed businessman, Olympian and community leader, Herb Douglas excelled,” Pitt Chancellor Patrick Gallagher said in a statement Monday. “He was both a champion himself and a champion of others, never hesitating to open doors of opportunity and help people pursue their own success. Unsurprisingly, Herb left an indelible mark on this world, while leaving an incomprehensible hole in the hearts of so many. I am proud to have called him my friend, and Karen and I will be keeping his family and circle of loved ones close in thought as we begin to honor his remarkable life and legacy.”
Mr. Douglas was the oldest American Olympic medalist and the first Pittsburgher ever to win one, taking the bronze in the long jump (then called the broad jump) at the London Games in 1948. He was the first Black basketball player at Allderdice High School and among the first (with Jimmie Joe Robinson) Black football players at the University of Pittsburgh, where he collected multiple degrees and set about the business of building a philanthropic legacy he worked at all of his life.
“Herb will be remembered as a true pioneer,” former Pitt Chancellor Mark Nordenberg told the Post-Gazette on Monday. “He became the first native of Pittsburgh to win an Olympic medal. He became one of the first African-Americans to achieve the executive levels in the major American companies. He was a man who always had goals and always was looking to make some contribution to the greater good. Those are two permanent legacies of Herb that anyone who knew him will have been moved by.”
Born March 9, 1922, Mr. Douglas grew up in Hazelwood in a family of unabashed optimists despite daunting evidence that optimism was clearly a long shot. His father was literally struck blind by a stroke while driving to the hospital for the birth of a daughter, and despite the resulting incapacities opened a garage on Ellsworth Avenue in Shadyside. He was the first Black person in Pittsburgh to use a seeing-eye dog.
As a student at Allderdice, Mr. Douglas thrived in three sports, but none more than track, where he won numerous City League and state titles as a sprinter and jumper. He was inducted into the Taylor Allderdice High School alumni Hall of Fame in 2009.
For a story on the 70th anniversary of the ’48 Olympics, Mr. Douglas told the Post-Gazette he had won three state track and field championships in high school “and many schools offered me a scholarship, (but) three of them, when they learned I was African American, well, the scholarship was pulled. That’s how I got interested in the civil-rights movement. That inspired me to go to (Louisiana’s) Xavier University, which was a predominantly Black school, but I withdrew because my father needed help running his business.
“He was too hard to work for, so I enrolled at Pitt.”
Mr. Douglas had long dreamed of participating in the Olympics, but even after he won five NCAA championships at Pitt, the Olympics were lost in a global nightmare from which the world seemingly could not awake. Successive Olympiads (1940 and 1944) had been wiped out by the horror of World War II. As war-ravaged London prepared to re-launch the Olympic mission in post-war Europe, the United States flew in its own food for the Olympic team and donated any excess to war relief efforts, then went on to win 84 medals, almost twice that of any other country.
Mr. Douglas leaped 24 feet, 9 inches at Wembley Stadium that summer, an inch short of a silver medal and 11 short of gold, but said the accomplishment always felt like gold to him. Back home, his Olympic medal opened some identifiable opportunities in a nation where Jackie Robinson had broken baseball’s color barrier just a year earlier.
In 2018, Mr. Douglas was inducted into Pitt’s inaugural class of its sports Hall of Fame.
Alonzo Webb Jr., who is Pitt’s current track and field head coach, says Mr. Douglas’ accomplishments both on and off the athletic field are still talked about within the program to this day.
“I don’t think he’s appreciated as much as he should be,” Mr. Webb told the Post-Gazette on Monday. “He’s a Pittsburgh man. ... People don’t know how impressive it is to come from the City League and be an Olympic medalist. He played football, too. I hope he gets more recognition and the kind of recognition he’s earned.”
Hired by Pabst Brewing to market its product to a Black consumer base in the Jim Crow South, Mr. Douglas set about making a success of himself with the single-mindedness of his parents.
“Yesterday was just kind of a vehicle to get you to tomorrow; they didn’t spend a lot of time on their troubles or their worries,” said Anne Madarasz of the Heinz History Center and the author of “Launched: The Life of Olympian Herb Douglas.” “Their idea was that no matter what life puts in your way, you look forward and you plan for tomorrow. Herb always had this incredible ability to look forward. Nothing stopped him.
“I tried to get him to tell me about what it must have been like, for a Black man in the deepest South trying to build a business, but he just wouldn’t dwell on that. He’d talk about it, but it didn’t stop him. He was always about finding a way. His idea was that, look, ‘I’m a person of value and I have something to offer and I really don’t care what you think about me; I’m going to keep going forward and I’m going to get it done.”
What Mr. Douglas got done as a business professional was virtually unprecedented by people of color at the time. After his successes with Pabst that followed his track career, Mr. Douglas was just the third Black person in the U.S. to be vice president of a national company, with Moet Hennessy USA. After meeting the record-setting hurdler Edwin Moses at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, Mr. Douglas became a confidant, eventually advising Mr. Moses to switch his ambitions from medicine to getting an MBA.
“That changed my whole trajectory,” Mr. Moses told the Post-Gazette at a ceremony to mark Mr. Douglas’ 100th birthday in March. “It was just good to have someone who had that kind of experience, who was a corporate guy. You couldn’t find anyone like a Herb Douglas. They didn’t exist.
“He’s a very giving individual. That’s never changed.”
On July 29, Philadelphia City Councilman Curtis Jones Jr. hosted a street renaming ceremony in Mr. Douglas’ honor, at which Ford Road became Herb Douglas Way.
“I never imagined I would have a friend like Herb,” said Mr. Nordenberg, who still talked to Mr. Douglas by phone at least once a week. “We have done a lot of things together — among them traveling to South Africa to present a Jesse Owens Award to Nelson Mandela, joining forces for many of the Jesse Owens dinners, and presenting his documentary on the 1936 Olympians to an Olympians reunion in Las Vegas, in addition to all of the things that we have done in Pittsburgh.
“He’d had his ups and down recently, but even at 100 the ups were more frequent. Since his 100th birthday though, he’s been more prone to reflecting on his readiness for the end.”
Mr. Douglas recently moved back to Pittsburgh for his final days, and his generosity continued to shine through.
“When he got to the nursing home in Pittsburgh, I would see him at least once a week,” Mr. Webb said. “The last time I saw him was this past Wednesday before leaving for a meeting. I’ll always remember he wasn’t feeling well and I knew something was wrong. He asked me to help situate him in bed, feed him some water and milk. But the last thing he did was he wished me luck for my meeting and he gave me a fist bump. He’s always been very kind.”
He is survived by his wife, Minerva Douglas; daughter Barbara Joy Ralston; daughter-in-law Susan Douglas; four grandchildren, Tracy Douglas, Christopher Douglas, Mikel Christianson, and Anja Besnik; as well as by great-grandchildren, grandnieces and grandnephews.
Memorial contributions can be made to the Herbert P. Douglas Jr. Scholarship at the University of Pittsburgh. Service details are pending..
Post-Gazette reporters Noah Hiles and Christopher Carter contributed to this report.
First Published: April 24, 2023, 12:43 p.m.
Updated: April 24, 2023, 6:15 p.m.
