Nathan G. Hale, Jr.

Nathan G. Hale, Jr., Professor of History Emeritus at UC Riverside (UCR) passed away peacefully in his sleep on February 17, 2013, in Chico, California. He was born in Sacramento on September 5, 1922, but he spent much of his early life in San Francisco. Professor Hale graduated from the Montezuma Mountain School for Boys in Los Gatos in 1940 and attended Princeton University. He enlisted in the Army in 1941 and served in the Signal Intelligence Service as a Japanese language interpreter and translator. He spent nine months in the Occupation Force in Tokyo after the Second World War was over.

After he left the Army in 1946, he returned to Princeton and served as Valedictorian of the combined classes of 1944-47. He received a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship to study in France at the Sorbonne. After almost a decade's absence, he returned to San Francisco and worked as a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle. Deciding that academia was his true calling, he attended UC Berkeley and earned a Ph.D. in American History in 1964.

Professor Hale’s work focused on modern American political and cultural thought. His two-volume study of the role of Freudian thought in America remains the definitive work on the subject: Freud and the Americans 1876-1917 (Oxford University Press, 1971) and The Rise and Crisis of Psychoanalysis in the United States,1917-1985 (Oxford University Press, 1995). Professor Hale was one of the owners of the lovely Battle Creek Meadows Ranch, near Lassen Park in Tehama County, which his mother's father had bought in 1894. The stewardship of this property was a major concern of his throughout his life, and he worked tirelessly on land and financial management issues for this ranch. He maintained a home there and spent much of his free time there.

Professor Hale married his beloved wife Ann in 1973 while they were both at UC Berkeley. They lived at various times in Riverside, Berkeley, and Piedmont before moving to Butte Valley outside Chico in 2004. Professor Hale was a life-long piano player, a student of fine arts and classical music, an avid news hound, a splendid horseback rider, an energetic hiker, and an active Episcopalian.

Professor Hale is survived by his wife Ann; his son David and his wife Casey and their two children, Colin and Fiona; and his daughter Elizabeth and her husband Brad Love.

Adapted by Paul Nabity from the following sources:
https://paw.princeton.edu/memorial/nathan-george-hale-jr-’44
https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/redbluffdailynews/obituary.aspx?n=nathan-g-hale&pid=163188941