HH mourns loss of former headmaster Charles Shepard

Charles R. S. Shepard, an educator active in his home communities of New Haven, Conn., and Albuquerque, N.M., died Jan. 23, 2010, in Davis, Calif., from complications of Parkinson’s disease. Mr. Shepard was 82. He had lived in Davis for three years.

From 1964 to 1969, Mr. Shepard served as headmaster of Hamden Hall Country Day School, working to strengthen teaching at the school. Earlier in his career, he taught English at the Taft School in Watertown, Conn., and chaired the English Department at St. John’s School in Houston, Texas. He also served as founding headmaster of Phoenix (Ariz.) Country Day School in 1961-62.

The turbulent sixties prompted Mr. Shepard to turn his attention from private education to the struggling public-school system of New Haven, Conn. He left Hamden Hall to teach at New Haven’s Hillhouse High School from 1969 until his retirement in 1981.

Mr. Shepard, known to his friends as Chuck, grew up in Neenah, Wis. There he acquired a lifelong love of the outdoors and with it the roots of his spirituality. Chuck graduated from The Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Conn., in 1945. He served in the Army during the European occupation and then attended Yale College, graduating in 1951. As a senior at Yale, Mr. Shepard served as president of Dwight Hall, now also known as Yale’s Center for Public Service and Social Justice. It was an organization he supported the rest of his life.

Mr. Shepard returned to Yale as a student twice more, earning a master’s degree in English in 1954 and, 30 years later, after his retirement from teaching, a master’s degree in divinity.

During the 1980s, Mr. Shepard trained to be a psychological counselor, worked as a hospital chaplain and helped found and coordinate New Haven’s chapter of Habitat for Humanity. During his decades in the New Haven area, he also served as president of the board of Yale-in-China (now Yale-China Association), as a member of the boards of Long Wharf Theater and Neighborhood Music School, and as a member of the Mayor’s Task Force on Education.

Mr. Shepard and his wife, Derry Ann Moritz, who married in 1981, moved to Albuquerque, N.M., in 1990. They were drawn by the history, spirituality and multicultural life of the Southwest.  Mr. Shepard was an active member of and served in leadership roles at the churches he attended in Connecticut and New Mexico – Trinity Church on the Green in New Haven and St. Andrew Presbyterian Church in Albuquerque.

In addition to Ms. Moritz, Mr. Shepard is survived by three children from his first marriage, Timothy C. Shepard 1970 of New York, N.Y.; Charles E. Shepard 1972 of Reno, N.V.; and Carrie Shepard of Davis, Calif,; by a stepson, Thomas Osenton of Chicago, Ill.; by six grandchildren, by his brother, Donald C. Shepard Jr. of Neenah, Wis., and by his first wife, Mary Jo Shepard of Hamden, Conn.