Dorene Mangan went to school in the days long before Title IX had an impact on equity in school athletic programs.

As a result of missing those opportunities as a youngster, she didn’t become an athlete until she was in her 40s.

After her initial forays into running, she joined the Parkside Athletic Club and entered triathlons and subsequently excelled in race walking, winning national titles in her age bracket.

Mangan even took third place in her category of females ages 50-59 in the Walt Disney World Marathon in January 2002.

But her very first race was the Thanksgiving Turkey Run in Kenosha several years ago, where she got a trophy.

“I remember we didn’t stay for the awards, and the trophy got sent later. I remember her crying; she had won this award for running a whole two miles,” her daughter Gretchen said.

Dorene G. Mangan, 67, of Kenosha, passed away on Oct. 6, leaving her three children, Gretchen Bloss, Brenda Bloss and Keith Bloss.

Mangan was born in Sheboygan, and when she was 8 years old, her father had both arms crushed in a work accident.

Witnessing his adjustment to life with hooks for hands left an impression on her.

“I think that influenced my mother. I think that’s the core of her toughness,” Gretchen said.

Mangan resided in Kenosha for most of her life.

When she was a young adult, Mangan worked as a dental assistant and did accounting.

She had a superior IQ and understood that higher education was imperative for herself and her children.

“She saved enough for all three of us to go to college,” Gretchen said. “It was really important to her that all of her kids got to go to college.”

Mangan graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Parkside with a bachelor’s degree in medical technology and later a master’s degree in public administration.

She was a medical technologist at St. Catherine’s Hospital and later was laboratory director at the Kenosha County Division of Health.

She loved science, and her interest in the subject led to a biology retreat in Jamaica in the mid-1990s, where she stayed in marginal accommodations and studied animal life.

She was able to take overseas adventures, including a trip to Peru in 2007.

Nearly five years before the Peru trip she had been diagnosed with breast cancer, the disease which had taken away her mother at age 62.

The medical professionals who treated Dorene were extremely optimistic during and after her treatment.

But just before she reached her five-year cancer-free milestone, they discovered the cancer had returned.

“We were in Peru hiking up Machu Picchu and she doesn’t realize that she has lung lesions and cancer in her back. She’s saying to me, ‘I can’t believe I’m moving so slow.’ I told her it was the altitude: We were at 13,000 feet,” Gretchen recalled.

“It was about three months after that trip she found out it was metastatic disease.”

Gretchen said she believes the subsequent chemotherapy treatment extended her mother’s life another year.

It gave the family time to take Dorene on trips to Door County and Eagle River and spend time together.

“We would carry her up into restaurants that didn’t have handicapped accessibility and took her on hiking trails in her wheelchair,” Gretchen said. “She hated being homebound.”