Gary Herbert ’65 and his wife Jane Herbert ’67 shared some memories with you of their life after IWU:

“I was a philosophy major at Illinois Wesleyan, and a member of TKE. There, at IWU, I met a girl from my own home town, Jane Provancher.  Jane was the vocalist for the Phi Mu Alpha jazz band for several years. We married in 1967.

After my graduation from IWU,  I joined the philosophy graduate program at the American University in Washington, D.C. (M.A.), and, in 1967, the philosophy graduate program at Penn State (Ph.D.).  Jane and I moved from Penn State to New Orleans after my graduation in 1972, and I spent the next thirty-eight years on the Loyola University New Orleans philosophy faculty. The last ten years at Loyola I was also editor-in-chief of the international journal, Human Rights Review. For those thirty-eight years as a member of the faculty, I taught Metaphysics, Political Philosophy, Modern European Philosophy, and Modern Rationalism. It was a good time, but we always felt “out of our element” in Cajun country.

During the last twenty-five years of that time, Jane taught 5th grade language arts. In addition, she involved herself in many choirs and New Orleans staged musicals. She also served as stage manager for NORD theatre in New Orleans for several years. We raised our two sons there in New Orleans, one son (his wife and our two granddaughters) who now resides in Tampa, Florida (he’s an evolutionary biologist on the University of South Florida faculty) and another son (with our other two granddaughters and a grandson) living in Las Vegas, Nevada. (He’s a family and marriage counselor.)

We stayed in New Orleans until 2010. At that point, we returned to central Pennsylvania (on a one year sabbatical). We had fallen in love with the place many years before. I retired in 2011 as the Rev. Guy LeMieux SJ, SAK distinguished professor emeritus of philosophy. We now live just outside State College, Pa., part way up Nittany Mountain, with a gorgeous view of Mt. Nittany, the Tussey Mountain range, and the valleys in between. The view from all around our house is somewhat reminiscent (to me) of the famous Peter Breugel painting, Hunters In Snow. We love the fact that, after thirty-eight years in New Orleans (the Cajun Night Before Christmas) we can enjoy a genuine Christmas season once again.

Jane continues to sing in choirs, and spends much of her time during the day doing voluntary work and working at a local winery. I spend my time working on a manuscript (political philosophy) and golfing as much as I can, hoping, perhaps futilely, to get my handicap down to a point I consider acceptable.”