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The Life of Prof. Henry William Sharadin

Prof. Henry W. Sharadin, 93, retired director of art education at Kutztown State College, died Saturday in Kings Convalescent home, Reading where he had been a guest. He was the oldest member of St. Paul’s United Church of Kutztown. A native of Kutztown and a son of the late John D. and Caroline E (Butz) Sharadin, he was an art professor at the college for 30 years, 20 of them as department chairman.

He retired in 1939. An 1891 alumnus of Keystone State Normal School, the College’s forerunner, he was the last surviving member of his class. A former resident of College Hill, he conducted his own art studio there fallowing his retirement from KSC. He won distinction in his own right as a painter. His works are displayed at KSC, the Reading Art Museum, six Berks county churches as well as elsewhere. Among his best known painting’s are a mural in the KSC Georgian Dinning Hall, “Education,” and a series of portrayals of the life and works of “Mountain Mary”, the hermit Saint of the Oley Valley.

The Sharadin Art Studio on the KSC campus has been named in his Honor. Upon graduation from the Normal School , now KSC, he furthered his studies at the New York Metropolitan Art School, at Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania School of Industrial Art as well as in Europe. He taught art in Reading for twelve years before joining the KSC faculty in 1907. In 1916 he became an art teacher at Allentown High school, he returned to the College in 1919. Not only was he the oldest of his beloved St. Paul’s church but he served as a member of the consistory and Adult Bible class teacher more than 30 years .

He had been a delegate to the General Synod and Lehigh Synod of the former Evangelical & Reformed church for many years. In 1953 Prof. Sharadin received a special citation from the Lehigh Synod for his outstanding church work. In addition to art and church activities, he was a Mason. Prof. Sharadin, whose wife Louise(Neff) Sharadin, died in 1946, is survived by a brother Francis E. Sharadin of 17 E. Main st., Kutztown, and a niece and nephew. Funeral services were held Wednesday at St. Paul’s United Church of Christ, Kutztown, at the direction of the Hugo G. A. Weber Funeral Home. Bearers were, Linwood Barto, Wilbert Gaul, Chester DeTurk, John Kemp, Max Fenstermacher, and Irvin Delong. Honorary bearers where, Italo I. deFrancesco, president of Kutztown State College, Prof. Bright W. Beck, Dr. Horace F. Heilman, Jacob R. Esser, Paul A. Knedler, William I. Rothermal, Dr. Quincy A. W. Rohrbach and President Judge Dawson H. Muth of the Berks County Orphans Court.
[Patriot, 4/28/1966].

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