1930s
Fendall Winston Yerxa ’36
Fendall Winston Yerxa ’36, who concluded his long and distinguished newspaper career as a professor of journalism at the University of Washington, was born on Sept. 17, 1913, to Dwight K. and Lelia Winston Yerxa, in Sewickley, Pa. Having prepared for college at Haverford School in Pennsylvania, he entered Hamilton in 1932 from Minneapolis and joined Alpha Delta Phi. As a freshman, he “neglected too many classes in preference to the Charlatans and Frank’s [a local student hangout in those days]” and was “politely” dismissed from the College. Soon, just as politely readmitted by President Ferry, he became president of the Charlatans theatrical troupe, engaged in varsity fencing, served on the Interfraternity Council and was tapped for Pentagon. He completed his studies in early 1937 and was graduated that year.
Fendall Yerxa, the one-time “freshman flunkout,” was asked to stay on as assistant secretary of admissions under College Registrar Wallace B. Johnson, becoming the first person to hold that post. After a semester, he returned to Minneapolis, where he began his career as a copy-boy “filling paste pots” at the Minneapolis Journal. He was soon advanced to reporter, and on Sept. 14, 1940, he and Florence C. Hawkins were married in that city.
In 1942, after the country had entered World War II, Fendall Yerxa joined the U.S. Marine Corps. Commissioned as a second lieutenant, he served in the Pacific theater and participated with the 1st Marine Division in the battles for New Britain, Peleliu and Okinawa. He engaged in combat as a platoon leader, company commander and later a battalion operations officer, and earned a Bronze Star as well as field promotion to captain.
Released from military service in 1946, after the war’s end, Fendall Yerxa immediately resumed his newspaper career by joining the staff of the New York Herald Tribune, then in its glory days. Beginning as a reporter, he made a specialty of photography and was soon named editor of photography news. He also served the Trib as its United Nations correspondent. Named city editor in 1952, he retained that post until 1955. In 1960, after five years as executive editor and vice president of the Wilmington (Del.) News-Journal newspapers, he returned to the by-then beleaguered Trib as managing editor and vice president.
It turned out to be a brief stint as the Trib floundered, and in 1961, Fendall Yerxa turned to electronic communication by joining ABC Television as national news editor. As one of the network’s news anchors, he hosted his own news-magazine-style TV program, Editor’s Choice. In 1963, he left ABC to become the Washington Bureau news editor for The New York Times. During the two momentous years that followed, he covered such events as Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Freedom March on Washington, the John F. Kennedy assassination and the 1964 presidential campaign.
In 1965, Fendall Yerxa, once described by Time magazine as a “lean and dedicated career journalist,” left the field to don academic robes as a professor of journalism at the University of Washington in Seattle. After “19 enjoyable years of productive labor in the Ivory Towers,” he retired as professor emeritus in 1984. He then promptly took off on a 16,000-mile “circumambulation” of the country. Once settled back in Seattle, he belatedly returned to the golf links after a long absence and quickly became addicted to the game. He also became a passionate fan of the Seattle Mariners.
Fendall W. Yerxa died in Seattle on Oct. 19, 2014, at the age of 101. His wife, Florence, from whom he was divorced in 1974, predeceased him in 2012. He is survived by four sons, Fendall W. “Rusty”, Jr., John D., Rufus and Quentin Yerxa; a daughter, Julie Yerxa; and six grandchildren.
Edward Charles Persike, Jr. ’39
Edward Charles Persike, Jr. ’39, a physician who practiced internal medicine and nephrology in San Mateo, Calif., for 38 years,was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., on April 9, 1918. His parents were Edward C., a sales representative, and Grace Canavello Persike. Ed Persike, also known as “Bud,” grew up in Brooklyn, where he was graduated in 1935 from highly regarded Erasmus Hall High School. With thoughts of preparing for a future career in medicine since he was 6-years-old, he came to College Hill that fall. He joined Chi Psi and, a talented singer who once sang in Carnegie Hall as a teenager, the Choir. He also served as business manager of Hamilton Life. In 1938, after three years on the Hill, he transferred to Stanford University when his family moved to California.
After acquiring his B.S. degree from Stanford in 1939, Bud Persike enrolled in its School of Medicine. Awarded his M.D. degree in 1944, he served for two years as a captain in the U.S. Army Medical Corps as World War II was drawing to a close. After the war he was granted Rockefeller Foundation and Columbia Foundation fellowships, both in internal medicine, and completed his internship and residency at Stanford University Hospital. There, his interest in scientific research having been kindled by Professor Earl Butcher at Hamilton, he engaged in research on kidney disease. It resulted in his authorship or co-authorship of numerous published papers. An assistant clinical professor of internal medicine at the Stanford School of Medicine for four years beginning in 1948, he moved to Hillsborough on the San Francisco Peninsula in 1952 and practiced in nearby San Mateo until his retirement in 1990.
Dr. Persike’s many contributions to the medical community included founding the Renal Dialysis center at Mills Memorial Hospital in San Mateo. He served as the first medical director of the center, from 1965 to 1988. For many years a member of the hospital accreditation committee of the California Medical Society, he played a significant role in improving medical care for Californians. He was also committed to the welfare of disabled children and served as president of the San Mateo Children’s Health Home.
Married in San Francisco on Dec. 18, 1943, to Louise Doran while he was a medical student, Bud Persike enjoyed traveling extensively with his wife. They visited some 100 countries during his retirement years, including a Hamilton-sponsored trip to Egypt in 1990. He also devoted much time to photography and won numerous awards for the results of his camera work. In addition, he grew award-winning roses and became known among horticultural friends as “the Consummate Gardener.”
Edward C. Persike, Jr. was residing in San Francisco when he died on July 27, 2014, at the age of 96. He is survived by his wife of 71 years. Also surviving are a son, Edward C. Persike III; a daughter, Linda L. Dills; and two grandchildren.
Herbert Strainge Long, Valedictorian ’39, Litt.D. (Hon.) ’72
Herbert Strainge Long, Valedictorian ’39, Litt.D. (Hon.) ’72, professor of classics emeritus at Case Western Reserve University and former Edward North Professor of Greek at Hamilton, was born on March 23, 1919, in Dexter, N.Y., near Watertown. His parents were Herbert A. Long, a paper mill manager, and the former Kathleen B. Strainge. Herb Long was graduated in 1935 from Dexter High School as valedictorian of his class of 19. He enrolled at Hamilton that fall. Two of his high school teachers had stimulated his interest in languages, as well as mathematics, and he continued to develop those interests on College Hill. In addition, he was ardently devoted to music and served as College organist from 1936 to 1939. Highly studious, he focused on Greek and Latin, and gained election to Phi Beta Kappa. A member of the Squires Club, he was graduated at the head of his class and with honors in Greek, Latin and mathematics in 1939.
Having been awarded a fellowship in classics by Princeton University, Herbert Long began his graduate studies there. Awarded an A.M. degree in 1941, he earned his Ph.D. just a year later, with a dissertation on the doctrine of metempsychosis in Greek philosophy. In 1943, he returned to College Hill as a math instructor in the U.S. Army’s pre-meteorological program, then being conducted at Hamilton during World War II. He also resumed his duties as College organist. After a year, he moved on to Colgate University to teach math in the U.S. Navy’s V-12 program on that campus.
In 1946, Dr. Long joined the faculty of Yale University as an instructor in classics. Promoted to assistant professor, he remained at Yale until 1951. After a year at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, he returned to Hamilton for the third time when appointed as an assistant professor of Greek, succeeding Professor Donald B. Durham following Durham’s death. Accompanying Herb Long was his bride, the former Charlotte D. Rider, whom he had married on June 7, 1952, in Bridgeport, Conn.
Herbert Long, who was promoted to associate professor in 1956 and named to the Edward North chair in 1963, taught not only Greek language courses but also the highly popular Ancient Civilization 11-12. While on the Hill he continued work on his critical text of Diogenes Laertius, financed by a grant from the American Philosophical Society. It would be published in two volumes by Oxford’s Clarendon Press in 1964. The following year, in recognition of his “outstanding contribution to classical scholarship,” he received the annual Award of Merit from the American Philological Association.
In 1968, Professor Long chaired the Committee on Academic Policy, which began work on a major revision of the College’s curriculum. After his departure for Case Western Reserve that year, the work continued and was completed under the chairmanship of Professor Charles C. Adler, Jr. Herbert Long would remain at Case Western for 24 years until his retirement. As a professor of classics, he chaired that department from 1983 to 1986. Although granted emeritus status in 1986, he continued to teach as a lecturer until 1992. Professor Long, who had been awarded an honorary doctorate of letters by his alma mater in 1972, will be remembered by his former students at Hamilton and Case Western alike for the enthusiasm he brought to his teaching and for his personal caring.
In retirement, Herbert Long continued to pursue his lifelong musical interests, although failing eyesight eventually ended his piano and organ playing. His leisure activities included the study of modern languages and the reading of modern European and American history, and he shared with his wife, Charlotte, an art history teacher, an interest in painting. In addition, he had a particular interest in the Mohawk language. His grandfather had been an Indian agent on the Mohawk Reservation on the St. Lawrence River in Canada, where Herbert’s father had grown up and learned to speak Mohawk. One of the most challenging tasks that Professor Long undertook in retirement was adding that language to the many he had already mastered.
Herbert S. Long, the resident in recent years of a retirement community in Oberlin, Ohio, died on Sept. 18, 2014, at the age of 95. Predeceased by his wife of 61 years the previous December, he is survived by a daughter, Alison “Sally” Long; a son, George Long; and a granddaughter, Molly Stambaugh.
