Frederick Riker Hellegers ’34

We were saddened to learn of the death Mar. 6, 2004, of Fred Hellegers, chairman for 31 years of the religion department of Washington and Jefferson College and the college's pastor.

Fred graduated from Passaic [N.J.] HS and spent his first two years at Davidson College. At Princeton he majored in philosophy. After graduation he went to Princeton Theological Seminary and then to Tübingen U. in Germany for his doctorate. He taught at the seminary and then took the pulpit of Bethel Presbyterian Church in East Orange, N.J.

In 1949 Fred went to Washington and Jefferson, where he stayed until the end of his career. He was married to the former Frances Gordon, who died in 1986. He often played two-piano music with her, and he was an accomplished, self-taught artist. His son, John '62, wrote: "He had been in vigorous health through his late 80s, swimming daily."

Fred leaves three children, John, David, and Susan H. Jones; three grandchildren, Katina Ketchum, Gordon Hellegers, and Laura Jones '05; and two great-grandchildren. The great love of his life, apart from work and family, was Grand Manan Island in Canada off the Maine coast, where he and his family vacationed, and where he maintained a library of thousands of books.

The Class of 1934