Peter R. Gerhart

Peter was born to Curtis and Barbara Gerhart in Reading, Pennsylvania, and moved with his family to Addison, Illinois during his high school years. He graduated from Addison Trail High School and attended the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana before serving in Vietnam from 1970-1971. He completed his degree at Illinois State University, where he met his wife Nancy. Peter and Nancy moved to Portland, Oregon, in 1974, where he enjoyed a long career at Boeing's Portland facility before retiring in 2006. Peter always had a passion for cars, racing, and all things mechanical. He owned a variety of sports cars, some of which he rebuilt and lovingly restored. After building his first race car, a Mini Cooper S, he began club racing in 1978, and enjoyed competing on the various road-racing courses around the Pacific Northwest, British Columbia, and California. He was also an active member of BMWACA for many years, taking advantage of every Club Track Day at Portland International Raceway road course to get track time in all of his various "street" cars, and he volunteered his expertise as driving instructor at our many club track days / driving schools at PIR. Some years later, he acquired, rebuilt, and competed in a Ginetta G4, by far his favorite. Peter was a truly gifted and creative man, and adept at anything he tried his hand at, whether it was cooking, carpentry, home maintenance, or landscaping, He built an extensive music collection and particularly loved the blues. He was very interested in physics, was an avid sci-fi reader, closely followed auto racing of all kinds, and loved supporting his racing friends on their pit crews when he wasn'?t competing himself. He considered himself very fortunate that he could retire early, as it afforded him the time to play and learn and test his skills doing new things that he enjoyed. He is survived by his wife and life partner of 41 years, Nancy Hollander; sister Dianne Jones of Newark, Ohio; brother Paul Gerhart of Seattle, Washington, nieces Jennifer Geer and Stephanie Green, of Ohio; and a wide circle of valued friends who will greatly miss him. A celebration of Peter'?s life will be held in July. In Peter'?s memory, memorial contributions could be made to fund lung cancer research.