Henry C. Herge papers

The following is an obituary note submitted to Wesleyan University following Herge's death in 2003.

Henry Curtis Herge, 97, who served as Dean of the Rutgers University Graduate School of Education in New Brunswick, New Jersey from 1953 to 1964, died March 8, 2003 of pneumonia. He lived in Fleet Landing, a retirement community in Atlantic Beach, Florida, but he had a home in Middletown, Connecticut from 1943 to 1945.

Dr. Herge began his long career in domestic and international education in 1928 as an English instructor, school principal, and school supervisor in public school systems on Long Island, New York. During World War II, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy and, subsequently, became the Commanding Officer of the Navy College Training Program at Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, which graduated 6,000 Navy and Marine Corps officers between 1943 and 1945. Just after V-J Day, he became Associate Director of the American Council on Education in Washington, D.C.; and in 1946, he became State Director of Higher Education and Teacher Certification in the Connecticut State Department of Education in Hartford, Connecticut.

In 1953, Dr. Herge accepted the invitation of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, to become Dean and professor of the Graduate School of Education, in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Among his other achievements, Dean Herge spearheaded the funding, design and construction of the building which today houses the Graduate School of Education. He left Rutgers in 1964 for a series of appointments with the Agency for International Development and the Organization of American States in Paraguay, Jamaica, Zambia, Malawi, and Italy, where he assisted in developing teacher training and school management curricula and programs. He returned to Rutgers as a professor in the Graduate School of Education and as the Associate Director of the Rutgers Center for International Studies. He retired in 1975.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Dr. Herge was the recipient of three degrees at New York University, a Ph.D. at Yale University, and an honorary degree at Wesleyan University. He was the author of Wartime College Training Programs of the Armed Services (1948); The College Teacher (1966); and A Taut and Salty Ship, The V-12 at Wesleyan (1991); and was the author of numerous articles in professional journals. He also served as an adjunct professor of education at Hartford University and Fairfield University, in Connecticut, and at the University of Southern California.

Survivors include his wife of twenty-six years, Alice Wolfgram Herge, of Atlantic Beach, Florida; two sons, J. Curtis Herge, of Potomac Falls, Virginia, and H. Curtis Herge, Jr., of Pittsford, New York; six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Dr. Herge's first wife, Josephine Breen Herge, died in 1975.