Herman L. Penner, Jr.

Born to Freda May Schenck and Herman Leigh Penner, Sr., Herman grew up in Lawrenceville, NJ, within a proud Black community that had been free and landowning since the early 1800s. The characters of his youth are legion, and his daughter thought she’d have more time to get all their names down before this assignment was due, but she was wrong. Frederica & Aaron Biddle “Aunt Doll” & “Uncle Poncey,” Aunt G, Aunt Ruth, Mr. & Mrs. Peterson, peppered stories of the YMCA, Sunday church service, Cub Scouts, and Little League, which are the bucolic ingredients of a childhood well lived in the mid-century, postwar period.

After his father died, his mother Freda sustained her son and herself working as a domestic and running a general store. Family, both related and not, raised Herman together.

Though modest in his beginnings, the timing and location of Herman’s birth was auspicious; by being born beyond a particular point in the 20th century, education was able to provide him with miracles it had failed to deliver to prior generations of deserving young people. He was offered the opportunity to attend The Hun School of Princeton as its first student of color and received a full tuition scholarship. He would excel academically and athletically, briefly contemplating a professional sports career (before such a thing was lucrative) as an alternative to college. But academics would win out, and he would continue on to Cornell University, where he studied Government. In Ithaca, he filled his time outside the classroom with the Young Democrats and his fraternity brothers at Alpha Epsilon Pi. After graduating in 1968, Herman moved to Princeton to attend the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (formerly known as the Woodrow Wilson School). He graduated in 1970 with his Master’s in Public Administration and headed to D.C.

It would be an oversimplification to present his path like a resume – simple or predetermined. A more accurate truth is that his life was forever altered thanks to the moral clarity and compassion of individual neighbors, administrators, faculty, and fellow students whose paths happened to cross his:

John A. Peterson and his wife Betty, who turned around a busload of scouts when they realized the pool hosting their troop’s field trip didn’t allow Black swimmers;

Dr. Paul R. Chesebro, the headmaster of The Hun School of Princeton, who decided to integrate the storied prep school and admitted Herman as the first Black student in the school’s history in 1960;

the brothers of Alpha Epsilon Pi, who inducted him into their organization at a time when most other White Greek organizations maintained membership bans against Black students;

Professor Andrew Hacker, his undergraduate academic advisor, who invested personal time, effort, and support, showed up at his doorstep to help him succeed at Cornell University, then wrote a glowing letter of recommendation for graduate school in an effort to provide an extra layer of security from the Vietnam War.

These acts by individual people stayed with Herman for the rest of his life; he continuously recounted them with gratitude and humility. Importantly, his life was changed over and over again, not only by evolving federal law and policy, but by the basic human decency within the decision of one person choosing to include another.

In DC, he would launch his career in the federal civil service while attending George Washington University Law School at night, where he met his wife, Mary Ann Masterson, as a fellow student. After graduating, he served as a lawyer and civil servant over the following three decades; he worked at the Internal Revenue Service, the Treasury Department, the Department of Justice, and the Administrative Office of the US Courts.

Of his professional career a highlight was his work for Vice President Al Gore’s National Partnership for Reinventing Government. A thoughtful and considered approach to ground-up reorganization of federal services, Herman was honored to be among the civil servants whose professional expertise was used to improve efficiency and ease of the government’s service offerings. He also traveled extensively as a representative of the Internal Revenue Service, serving as a consultant to the Philippines and Taiwan while those countries updated and digitized their tax infrastructures.

Outside of work, he spent his time developing a feverish and, at times, incomprehensible emotional investment in Washington sports. He served as the president of the Cornell Club of Washington, and hoped his college interviews would help launch the lives of young people in the way a Cornell education had for him. He raised his daughter, Kate, to have an exacting sense of how to comport one’s self and treat others in the world; to know the difference between not guilty and innocent; to keep her eye on the ball; to not say a word to police other than to ask for a lawyer. He enjoyed music, travel, investing, photography, his cats, and nonfiction tomes in excess of 500 pages.

In his retirement, he dove into genealogical and historical research, scouring the archives for his family and ancestors. He served on the Board of Trustees for The Hun School, leapt at every chance to drive back to its campus, and was honored as a Distinguished Alumnus in 2004.

He is preceded in death by his parents, Freda May Schenck and Herman Leigh Penner, Sr., Frederica & Aaron Biddle, John and Betty Peterson, Pete Peterson, and his cats, including, but not limited to, Crazy Pierre, Miss Puffy, Rufus, Leonardo, and Raphael.

He is survived by his wife Mary Ann Masterson, his daughter Katherine Leigh Penner, the Hon. John A. Peterson, Jr., and his wife Bonnie R. Peterson, and his cats Mortimer and Samantha.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Animal Welfare League of Arlington(https://www.awla.org/?form=DonateNow) and the Feline Health Center of Cornell University(https://securelb.imodules.com/s/1717/giving/interior.aspx?sid=1717&gid=2&pgid=403&cid=1031&dids=5252&bledit=1&sort=1&appealcode=VMXXOL).

Visitation will be held at Murphy Funeral Home, 4510 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, VA 22203, US, on October 3, 2026, at 9:00 am. Followed by a Committal Service held at Columbia Gardens Cemetery, 3411 Arlington Blvd, Arlington, VA 22201, US, on October 3, 2026, at 11:00 am.