The Surprising Tale of Herbert Singer and his Yearbook

Front of the '46/'47 UD yearbook

I want to tell a bit of a different type of story than we usually have here, and one that I recently stumbled upon quite accidentally. Most of the tale is outside of Delaware, let alone Mill Creek Hundred, but it does begin with a Delaware connection. In fact, it all began simply with me looking down and seeing the word "Hen". It's one of those stories that just kept getting more interesting the more I dug into it, and I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I did.

As noted, this all began very simply, with no notion where it would ultimately lead. I was walking around one day and happened to look down in a bin of discarded items (I don't want to bore you with the specifics, but suffice it to say that the item was retrieved very legally and safely). I saw the word "Hen" on what appeared to be a book or certificate of some sort. Thinking that it might have something to do with the University of Delaware (and since my daughter currently attends there and I've recently "reconnected" with UD and Newark) I grabbed it out of curiosity. Once I did, I realized that it was a book, large and hardbound. In fact, it was a UD yearbook -- from the 1946/47 school year! I assume you all know me well enough to know I was excited.

As I looked through the book, I came across one fascinating thing after another. First in the faculty/administration section, I saw several names I recognized from the buildings later named in their honor -- Dr. Wilbur Owen Sypherd, Francis Hagar Squire, and John Fenton Daugherty. And while I didn't recognize any specific names of students, there were plenty of family names I knew -- Duncan, England, Townsend, Winchester, and Hollingsworth, among others. I also had fun identifying the buildings that were pictured. Most looked the same, but with slightly different (and generally sparser) surroundings. Only one building was named differently -- then University Hall, now Hullihen. Well, also Memorial Hall was then the Library.

Then I got to thinking about the date of the yearbook, covering the '46/'47 school year. Although the war in Europe had ended in May 1945 and against Japan in August, the soldiers didn't just hop on a plane and come back the next week. Demobilization proceeded well into 1946, so this school year was really the first regular one in at least six years. If you consider that attending college would have been more difficult for many students during the Great Depression, this was really the first regular session in nearly twenty years. And even in this "regular" academic year, most of the students (at least the male ones) had a very unconventional path to get where they were.

A page of Arts and Science Seniors from the '46/'47 UD yearbook

I know it's a well-documented phenomenon that people in old pictures always look older than they are, so in looking at the photos of the juniors and seniors of '46/'47 it didn't at first occur to me that they actually were older than the average college student. One wonderful thing the year book does is credit the men for their service. Next to the senior pictures, along with listing their hometown, major, and various team, club and group affiliations, it lists things like "Army 39 months", "Infantry 2 years", "Army Air Corps 3 years", "Marine Corps 3 years". So these pictures of what should be 21 or 22 year old kids are actually of men in their mid to late 20's or older. Plus, they had all seen things that we can only imagine. Things that they likely had no one to talk to about except each other, and most of them were probably trying to forget it all and move on with their lives. I truly have the utmost respect for that entire generation.

Mechanical Engineering Junior, Herbert Singer

So after looking through the book for a while, I started to become curious about how it got to where I found it. My first thought was that maybe someone had accidentally thrown away a family treasure -- their grandfather or great-grandfather's yearbook. Luckily, there was one important clue as to the book's origin. Taped to the inside cover was an invitation to the 50th Reunion of the Class 1948, which logically was held on campus in May 1998. Also included was the envelope in which it was sent, addressed to Herbert Singer of Collingswood, NJ. Sure enough, listed among the juniors in the yearbook was Herbert Singer. So it seems that he owned it until at least 1998.

Invitation to the 1998 50th Reunion of the UD Class of 1948

Again, thinking it might have been a relative who placed it in the bin (I couldn't match the Singer name with anyone who would have done it), and realizing Mr. Singer's age, I searched for an obituary notice for him, hoping it would list a family member with a name I recognized. However, I couldn't find any obituary or death notice, but I did find a date of birth, which just happened to be exactly 100 years the next day (from when I was searching)! For a while, I had reason to think that Herbert might still be alive and about to hit the century mark. Not the most likely scenario, but not impossible.

1944 Draft Registration card  for Herbert Schlesinger Singer

Since the yearbook listed his home as Wilmington I looked for him in the previous censuses, but I didn't find anything that seemed to be him. However, I did find the item seen above, which changed everything. It's Herbert's WWII draft registration card, which although undated should have been filed in February 1944 when he turned 18. It shows his address as 1204 Shallcross Avenue in Wilmington and lists him as a student at the University of Delaware. This is our guy! There are, though, two big surprises on here. First is that his place of birth is Vienna, Austria. Didn't see that coming. The top line is the biggest piece of new information -- his last name was first written in as Schlesinger, then crossed out and replaced with Singer. So we're not looking for Herbert Singer from Wilmington, we're looking for Herbert Schlesinger from Vienna!

With that new information, I was able to go back and find the Schlesingers in Wilmington in the 1940 Census -- Herbert, with his older brother George, and parents Paul and Louisa. I then looked for them in the 1930 Census, but came up dry (I really should have known that, though, as the 1940 Census listed their 1935 residence as Vienna). I couldn't find much else, so I went to something I often overlook -- ship manifests. Ancestry sometimes lists a lot of those, but they're usually just for trips people make. Herbert even has ones in the 1950s to England and to Bermuda -- maybe for work, maybe for vacation, but just common, standard travel in the pre-jet age. That being said, there was one manifest that was very different, and was in fact the major bombshell in this story (thanks for hanging in there with me, we're finally to the good part).

Section of the Jan. 1940 manifest for the MV Georgic

Seen above is part of the ship manifest from the MV Georgic, for its voyage from Liverpool, England to New York. About three quarters of the way down, you can see Paul, Louise, George, and Herbert Schlesinger. For all four, their place of birth and most recent residence is listed as Vienna, Germany. But wait, Vienna is the capital of Austria, you say. This is where this gets interesting. The date of departure for this sailing was January 30, 1940, and what had been Austria was incorporated into the Greater German Reich in March 1938, in what was known as the Anschluss. This becomes even more relevant when you look at the column "Race or People" and see that most passengers, including the Schlesingers, are listed as "Hebrew". Yes, Herbert Schlesinger, aka Singer, and family were Jews who escaped Nazi controlled Austria in late 1939/early 1940 -- months after the outbreak of World War II on September 1, 1939.

The Cunard White Star line's MV Georgic

Not to attempt to cover the entire story, but after the Anschluss the Nazi regime did impose increasingly harsh anti-Jewish laws and procedures in Austria. Kristallnacht, in November 1938, was particularly violent in Vienna. During that first year or so, emigration for Jews was difficult, but possible. There were procedures and fees, and most of their property would be confiscated upon leaving. By May 1939, about half of Austria's Jewish population had fled. After that, the flow slowed to a trickle, but some, like the Schlesingers, were lucky enough to get out. And lest you think that things were still just "difficult" while they were there, the first deportation of Viennese Jews by the SS to what were then detention camps occurred in the autumn of 1939 -- before the Herbert and family had left.

Toastmasters Club dinner, 12/24/1956

Somehow, though, the Schlesingers were fortunate enough (and must have had the right connections) to leave Nazi-controlled territory and make it first to England, and then to the United States. The family settled in Wilmington, and Herbert attended Wilmington High School (he also won several News Journal photo contests!). In June 1944 he was enlisted into the Army, and after his discharge in June 1946 he headed to UD. After graduating in 1948, Herbert got a job as a junior engineer with the Wright Aeronautical Corporation in Wood-Ridge, NJ, where they manufactured aircraft engines for the US Navy and Air Force. It looks like he continued to serve with the military, as the 1956 Toastmasters Club photo above shows. If you compare him to the UD picture, I'm pretty sure that's him. I also think that later in his career he had a hand in a patent relating to communications satellites. 

As best as I can tell, Herbert moved to Collingswood by the early 1950's and lived there the rest of his life. I see no evidence that he ever married or had any children. As I said earlier, at first I could find no obituary or death notice for him, but finally I found him on the Find-A-Grave website with an entry for him in a cemetery near Collingswood. Also in the same cemetery were Paul, Louise, and George. Both Herbert and his brother George had died in 2020 (no day given), no doubt at the height of the pandemic, and given their ages my suspicion is that they were Covid victims. Given what was going on then, and the fact that they had little to no family around (except maybe George, seems to have a wife's name on his marker, with no death date), it's not surprising that there was no public notice. There would have been no public funeral.

Herbert Singer's grave marker

And given this situation, it then seems likely that Herbert's estate was sold off after his passing, and his yearbook was later purchased, perhaps on eBay or the like, by someone unrelated to him. Then, finally, it ended up in my hands. If you stuck around through all this, I hope you enjoyed the twists and turns of this story. I just found it fascinating how this one book, this one artifact from nearly 80 years ago, went from being just a cool thing to look at, to being an insight into some of the most traumatic periods of the 20th Century. Now that the Greatest Generation is almost all gone, we only have these reminders and mementos to help us keep their memories alive.