Richard Arnold Berger

Class of 1936

March 1, 1917 – November 30, 2001

Soldier · Educator · Superintendent

Early Life

Richard A. Berger was born on March 1, 1917, in Sayville, New York, a hamlet on the South Shore of Suffolk County, Long Island. He grew up at 145 Edwards Avenue with his parents, Ralph A. Berger and Minnie A. Berger. His father was also his early employer, and the family’s home and business shared the same address — a detail captured in Richard’s World War II Draft Registration Card, completed when he was twenty-three years old.

Sayville in Richard’s youth was a close-knit waterfront community built on timber, oysters, and the social rhythms of a small Long Island town. By the time Richard came of age, it had become a year-round residential community with deep roots in local civic and family life.

Military Service: World War II

In 1940, Richard registered for the Selective Service draft (D.S.S. Form 1, Serial No. 364, Order No. 1304). He listed no telephone, noted employment under his father, and signed the card in his own confident hand. His country of citizenship: U.S.A.

Richard entered the United States Army and was assigned to the European Theater of Operations. He was deployed overseas in November 1944, entering the war at one of its most critical and brutal phases. He served in the European theater, including the Battle of the Bulge — Germany’s last major offensive on the Western Front, fought from December 1944 through January 1945 across the frozen forests and snowfields of the Ardennes region of Belgium and Luxembourg. The battle cost more than 19,000 American lives and was the deadliest single engagement American forces faced during the entire war.

Richard survived the campaign and by late June 1945, his parents — Ralph and Minnie Berger — received a cablegram from their son, Private Richard Berger, announcing that he expected to arrive home from Germany around July 10th. The Suffolk County News reported the news on June 29, 1945. He had been overseas for more than seven months.

He returned to Sayville that summer. His obituary would later note that he was a veteran of World War II who served in the European theater, including the Battle of the Bulge — a fact listed plainly among his life’s defining achievements.

A Career in Public Education

After the war, Richard built a distinguished career in public education on Long Island. The opportunity that would define his professional life came with the formation of the Sachem Central School District in 1955. On April 21 of that year, citizens from Farmingville, Holbrook, Holtsville, and Lake Ronkonkoma voted by an overwhelming margin — 707 to 26 — to consolidate their small union free school districts into a single central district. Sachem was officially born on July 1, 1955.

Richard joined the new district almost immediately. By September 1955, the Suffolk County News reported that Richard Berger of Sayville had been named principal of the district’s first junior high school, to be established at the Gatelot Avenue Elementary School in Lake Ronkonkoma. Gatelot Avenue was itself already a landmark — it had been the first post-World War II school built on all of Long Island, opened in 1948. The new junior high would serve third through sixth grades in the morning and function as a junior high for seventh and eighth grade students in the afternoon, with ninth-graders from Holtsville attending afternoon classes as well.

Richard went on to serve as principal of Sachem High School. A story preserved in local memory captures something of his character in that role: when interviewing a prospective gymnastics coach named Ken Friedheim, Richard told him that if Friedheim could teach him a handstand, he had the job. “I was willing to,” Friedheim later recalled, “but he backed off. I got the job.”

He eventually rose to the position of Superintendent of Schools for the Sachem Central School District. During the years he led and helped shape the institution, Sachem expanded at a pace that was extraordinary even by the standards of postwar suburban Long Island. The district opened school after school to keep pace with a rapidly growing community:

Nokomis Elementary (1963) · Hiawatha Elementary (1964) · Chippewa Elementary (1967) · Wenonah Elementary (1967) · Cayuga Elementary (1969) · Merrimac Elementary (1969) · Tamarac Elementary (1970) · Tecumseh Elementary (1970) · Seneca Middle School (1970) · Sachem High School North (1970)

By the late 1970s, student enrollment in the Sachem district had exceeded 10,000, and Sachem was on its way to becoming the second-largest school district by population on Long Island. Richard retired as Superintendent of Schools of Sachem in 1980, concluding a career that had spanned the entire life of the district from its founding year.

His portrait hangs in the Sachem district office alongside those of the other superintendents who led the institution — a gallery that later administrators have described as a “daunting” reminder of the men who built and led the district with exceptional dedication. Richard A. Berger is listed as the second superintendent in Sachem history, following Walter C. Dunham, who served from 1940 to 1975 and is remembered as the “Father of Sachem Schools.”

Civic Life

For Richard Berger, civic and professional life were not separate things. As a school administrator in a newly formed suburban district during one of the most rapid periods of community growth in Long Island’s history, he was necessarily a public figure. His role required sustained engagement with parent-teacher associations, the school board, community members, and taxpayers whose support was needed to fund each new school building. The Sachem district published its own community newsletter — the Sachem News — and the superintendent was central to the district’s ongoing communication with the public it served.

Richard also served his community in a broader sense by being, for twenty-five years, a steady and trusted presence in the institutions that shaped the lives of tens of thousands of children and families. The communities of Holbrook, Holtsville, Farmingville, and Lake Ronkonkoma grew up around Sachem schools, and Richard grew with them.

Later Life and Legacy

After retiring from Sachem in 1980, Richard relocated to Virginia, where he spent his final years. He died on November 30, 2001, at the age of eighty-three. He was survived by his wife of fifty-eight years, Renee; two daughters; four grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

His obituary noted the essential facts of a remarkable life with quiet plainness: he was born in Sayville, where he spent most of his life; he was a veteran of World War II who served in the European theater, including the Battle of the Bulge; he was the first Junior High and Senior High School principal of the Sachem School District; and he retired as Superintendent of Schools of Sachem in 1980.

Richard A. Berger’s life followed one of the defining arcs of twentieth-century American experience — from a Depression-era boyhood in a small Long Island village, through combat in the worst battle of the war in Europe, to three decades of quiet, consequential public service building the schools and institutions of a growing suburban community. He left behind a district, a generation of students, and a community shaped in lasting ways by his work.

Sources

World War II Selective Service Draft Registration Card (D.S.S. Form 1), Richard A. Berger, Serial No. 364, Order No. 1304, 1940.

“Pvt. Richard Berger Expected Home,” Suffolk County News, June 29, 1945.

“Richard Berger of Sayville Named Principal,” Suffolk County News, September 2, 1955.

Richard Berger obituary, c. November 2001.

“New Superintendent Jim Nolan Proud of Sachem Family,” Sachem Patch, March 24, 2010.

“Sachem Gymnastics: The Lost Dynasty,” Sachem Patch, April 2, 2011.

Sachem Central School District: About Us. sachem.edu.

Sachem School District, Wikipedia.

“BOE Pres says Sachem is ‘Second to None,'” Sachem Report, January 5, 2013.