Dr. Dean A. Dohrman, a Pettis County Republican who served in the Missouri House of Representatives and as the County Assessor, died Friday, Feb. 2 at the age of 64.
Dohrman served as the Pettis County Assessor from 2005 to 2012, when he was elected to represent House District 51, which included Pettis, Johnson and Saline counties. He was a state representative from 2013 to 2021, serving on numerous committees and leading several as chair. Dohrman, of La Monte, was also very active in local Republican politics.
Dohrman’s sudden passing left many in Pettis County to deal with a sense of shock and loss.
Pettis County Clerk Nick La Strada has known Dohrman since his early days with the Young Republicans.
“Dean was just a genuine man always,” La Strada said. “Always there for good advice if you ever needed him. A tragic loss. I did not know he had the health issues. I think he just kept that under wraps, it was just his personality.”
Dohrman lent his expertise to Pettis County as assessor and La Strada worked with him for 13 years until redistricting gave Dohrman a shot at a bigger job.
“In the year of 2012, the district for state Rep opened up,” La Strada recalled. “He pulled me aside and said, ‘Nick, I'm going to run for state representative.’ He did it and he successfully won all those elections and served out all his eight years.”
La Strada hated losing Dohrman at the assessor’s office but knew he was the right person for the job in Jefferson City.
“Serving with him as an assessor, it was good to work with him,” La Strada recalled. “He was a great assessor and obviously a great representative as well. Just a good, genuine person. Any type of advice you needed, he was always there.”
Rusty Kahrs proudly called Dohrman one of his best friends and admired his unwavering sense of civic duty.
“He was a tremendous friend of mine,” Kahrs said. “He did a lot of great things for the community. He served as Pettis County Assessor and then he went on to be the local state Rep. He was very well educated but just a good guy all the way around.”
A local boy at heart, Dohrman felt a calling for something more and was a devoted politician and community activist.
“He was born and raised up in the La Monte area, and was a few years older than me, but we bonded very closely when I was (presiding) commissioner and he was he was the assessor,” Kahrs recalled. “We worked together and wrote a lot of grants together. Dean was very instrumental in getting the waste-to-energy project out at the College in the landfill.”
Kahrs is hurt by the sudden loss of Dohrman but knows he left an unimpeachable legacy.
“We lose the good ones too soon,” Kahrs said. “I'm gonna be missing him and my family's gonna miss him. Dean was just a friend to everybody, and you'd be hard-pressed to find somebody that could say a bad thing about him.”
According to his House of Representatives biography, Dohrman taught government, history, law and public administration at the college level for several institutions, most recently for the Colorado State University-Global Campus. He was also a published author.
After his time in the House, Dohrman worked as the Executive Director of the Educated Citizen Project and later as Executive Director of the Missouri Joint Committee on Public Employee Retirement.
According to his biography, he earned his Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies-Public Policy, a Master of Arts in Political Science from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, a Master of Arts in History from the University of Central Missouri, and a Bachelor of Arts in History/Political Science from UCM.
Carla Young with the Missouri GOP and the Pettis County Republican Central Committee knew Dohrman as an open, funny man with a sharp wit and a mind that retained facts.
“He loved politics and history, and that's why he's Dr. Dean Dohrman,” Young said. “He always loved to quiz you off and on, like, ‘Who are the four presidents that were assassinated?’ and I just kind of looked at him and I’d roll it off with who they were and he's like, ‘You're right.’ Then he would tell me some off-beat thing that happened to each one of them prior to their deaths, something that only Dean would probably know from searching history books at some point in his life, and he always would win trivia contests in college. I was told that he always let the other people on his team go first or wait for them to say something and then he would always be the one to answer everything; he had a photographic memory.”
Young said Dohrman was the type of people’s representative who should be sent to the House.
“He's one of those rare types; he was always trying to do the right thing for the right reasons and that's really hard to do,” Young said. “The real genuine people go down with the servant’s heart to try to do the best for the people, and Dean was one of those and he wanted to make the most of his time in the legislature.”
Local lawyer and former Republican state Sen. Stan Cox bonded with Dohrman as they served together in the Missouri Legislature.
“He was very involved in the budget committee, which is a very important committee of the House, and had a pretty diverse interest in all sorts of things,” Cox said. “I had the pleasure of serving a couple years with him in the House, so that even made us closer friends. He's a good friend of mine and I'm going to miss Dean. I just enjoyed his company. Interested in politics, he was obviously very well educated. He was the vice chairman of the party for the last few years.”
Dohrman was also instrumental in building Pettis County McKinley Day into a huge event.
“He was the original driver behind that,” Cox recalled. “He had seen other people having successful events and he brought it back to Pettis County and said, ‘Why can't we do that here?’ and it has worked out very well. It's been a great event with 400 to 500 people there every time.”
Cox described his friend as brilliant, giving and exceptionally kind.
“He's very generous with his time and a very serious Christian,” Cox said. “People might not know that, but I had the opportunity to participate in Sunday school class with him for a while and he’s very knowledgeable about the Bible. He's a very deep-thinking person.”
Dean is survived by a sister, Kathryn Gerling, of Sedalia; his stepdaughter, Laura Burlingame, and her husband, Tyler, of La Monte; a grandson, Brooks Allen; and many cousins.
Funeral services will be at 1 p.m. Friday, Feb. 9 at Rea Funeral Chapel in Sedalia. A visitation for family and friends will be from 11 a.m. until service time at Rea Funeral Chapel. The burial will be at La Monte Cemetery.
Chris Howell can be reached at 660-530-0146.
