Gerard “Jerry” Lenthall

Gerard (Jerry) Lenthall (born Löwenthal) died on July 14, 2024, at the age of 91, after years of suffering from dementia. He is survived by his three children, Elizabeth (Lisa), Bruce and Joshua (Josh); his two daughters-in-law, Calista Cleary and Melanie Lenthall; and his five grandchildren, Chapin and Lia Lenthall-Cleary, and Riley, Maddie and Aubrey Lenthall.

Jerry was born June 25, 1933, in Geneva, Switzerland, as his family fled Germany and the gathering storm that would become the Holocaust. Seeking a safe home, Jerry’s family moved first to Istanbul, Turkey and then, in 1938, to the United States, where they landed in the Boston, Massachusetts area. Jerry’s youth remained unsettled, as the family moved to new residences annually, and with the death of his father when Jerry was 11.

As a teenager, Jerry found belonging in Fenway Park – where he often went to watch the Boston Red Sox – and in his schools. At Roxbury Latin School, he developed a life-long friendship and joined the wrestling team, a pursuit he continued in college. Swarthmore College became an important fixture for him throughout his life: he attended reunions annually, most recently his 60th.

After graduating from Swarthmore, with a BA in economics, Jerry moved west, where he earned a master’s degree in statistics from Stanford University, then east again where he obtained his MBA from Harvard University. His mother, Theresa, died when he was 24, a loss Jerry was to feel acutely, even as his memory faded in his declining years. Back in California in 1963, Jerry met and married Patricia (Pat) Riley. Together they moved to North Carolina, where he completed his PhD in psychology at Duke University.

Jerry and Pat had three children. His children became a central part of his life. He took joy in their activities and accomplishments and saw in them their best selves. He attended their countless soccer and basketball games – even helping to coach the soccer teams, despite having no experience with the game.

After Jerry and Pat divorced, he followed the family when they moved to Massachusetts in 1977. In New England, he discovered another cornerstone of his life: teaching. From 1978 to 2003 he worked as a psychology professor at Keene State College in Keene, New Hampshire. Engaging his students was among his greatest joys. He taught a wide variety of topics in psychology, but the most meaningful ones to him related to the psychology of immigration and the Holocaust. At Keene State, he helped to found the school’s Cohen Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

All of this was part of the wide-ranging and deep intellectual engagement that Jerry was known for. He was a voracious reader, with an intense love of books. He was known to read the end of novels first, to decide, he said, if it was worth his time to read the whole book; invariably, he read them all. He wrote scholarly work on family relationships, silence, teaching psychology, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and child psychology, and Charles Dickens. Later in his life he became fascinated studying his extended family history, a story of dislocation, migration and a complex marriage between his own parents.

As his children grew up and moved around the country, Jerry loved to travel to wherever the three lived. In retirement, he settled in the Pittsburgh area, to be a regular part of Josh’s family’s life. There, he relished being part of his grandchildren’s lives and activities.

Jerry was open-minded and curious. He liked talking with strangers, glimpsing their lives and hearing their stories. Starting in the 1960s, he practiced meditation daily. Meditation, he felt, provided him with a foundation to weather life’s inevitable bumps with evenness.

Perhaps more than anything else, Jerry loved genuine conversations, particularly with family and friends – often on extended walks or late into the night. This reflected his passion for learning and diverse interests – and his deep-felt desire to connect with those he loved.