Mr. Ashenfelter told a reporter that he had done poorly at Helsinki because it had been his first international race. Several weeks later, though, he ran with the U.S. two-mile relay team that set a world record in London.
His amateur career continued with the New York Athletic Club, and he competed in the Penn Relays and the Pan American Games. In 1954, he won the U.S. 3,000-meter steeplechase championship, a title Horace held the year before. Mr. Ashenfelter broke a Penn Athletic Club Track Meet record in the 3,000-meter steeplechase in 1956, the year he stopped competing.
In the early 1950s, he began his business career with National Gypsum Co. In 1963, he established Ashenfelter Associates, a manufacturers representative for masonry and drywall accessory companies. Since his retirement in the mid-1990s, his daughter Mary Jo Heckman has operated the Malvern firm.
Mr. Ashenfelter grew up on his family's century-old apple farm in Collegeville. He and his brothers and his sister, Jane, helped make cider and sold produce from the farm at the Reading Terminal Market.
Mr. Ashenfelter played basketball at Collegeville High School. During World War II, he served in the Army with the 33d Field Artillery Battalion in Germany.
He graduated from Penn State in 1952 and in 1953 married his college sweetheart, Barbara Ranck. The couple raised two daughters in Malvern.
Mr. Ashenfelter served on the Malvern Borough Council for seven years. He was a 62-year member of the Warren Masonic Lodge in Collegeville and enjoyed playing golf and tennis at Aronimink and Hershey's Mill Golf Clubs.
In addition to his wife, his daughter Mary Jo, and his brothers and sister, Mr. Ashenfelter is survived by another daughter, Elaine Bednarz.
A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Friday, June 25, at Paoli Presbyterian Church, 225 S. Valley Rd.
Donations may be made to Natural Lands Trust, 1031 Palmers Mill Rd., Media, Pa. 19063 or National Audubon Society, 1201 Pawlings Rd., Audubon, Pa. 19403.
Contact staff writer Sally A. Downey at 215-854-2913 or sdowney@phillynews.com.
