Dr. Christopher Neri Breiseth, 89, historian, professor, CEO, and college president, died peacefully at home surrounded by family in Ticonderoga, N.Y. on June 27, 2026 from acute myeloid leukemia. He was born in Minneapolis on Oct. 6, 1936 to Joyce Porter Breiseth and Norton Millard Breiseth, who raised five children in a civically-minded family.
The family moved to Los Angeles after WWII and Dr. Breiseth graduated from Alexander Hamilton High School in 1954 and from UCLA in 1958 with a B.A. degree in History with Highest Honors. Seminal youthful experiences were his work on Adlai Stevenson’s presidential campaigns in 1952 and 1956 and a 1957 trip he took to India through the Project India initiative, a forerunner of the Peace Corps.
He earned a B. Litt degree in Modern British History at Oxford University in 1962 and a doctorate in Modern European Intellectual History at Cornell University in 1964. As a graduate student at Cornell, Dr. Breiseth lived at Telluride House, where several notable guests, including Frances Perkins, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Secretary of Labor, lived with the students. Following Ms. Perkins’s death, he wrote an essay titled “The Frances Perkins I Knew.”
Telluride was also the place where he met his future wife of 48 years, Jane Morhouse, of Ticonderoga, N.Y., with whom he had three daughters and shared a vibrant, service-oriented life. As empathetic and enthusiastic communicators and connectors, they hosted friends, visitors, and unforgettable dinner parties in each place they lived.
Dr. Breiseth began his teaching career at Williams College in 1963. After a leave of absence from Williams to work in Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty at the Office of Economic Opportunity in Washington, D.C. from 1967 to 1969, he changed his scholarly focus to American multiracial democracy. He received a Danforth Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Black Studies at the University of Chicago in 1970 with historian Dr. John Hope Franklin, who would become a lifelong friend and mentor.
Dr. Franklin recommended him as a faculty member for the new Sangamon State University campus in Springfield, Ill. — the Land of Lincoln. Surrounded by Lincoln’s legacy, Dr. Breiseth continued to develop his interests in presidential history and race relations, helping to instigate a successful effort to desegregate Springfield schools and reform public school culture in the mid-1970’s. It was the first Northern desegregation case following the civil rights era.
Dr. Breiseth served as the President of Deep Springs College in the High Sierras of California from 1980-83, and then as President of Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., from 1984-2001. At Wilkes, he oversaw the reorganization and expansion of academic programs, the addition of a Doctor of Pharmacy program, the construction and renovation of several new buildings and iconic additions to the campus such as the Fenner Quadrangle and the John Wilkes Statue, the enrichment of student engagement initiatives, and the transition from college to university.
As a civic leader in Wilkes-Barre, he was involved with several community and interfaith organizations and chaired both the Pennsylvania Council for the Humanities and the Earth Conservancy, an environmental reclamation project on mine-scarred land led by Congressman Paul E. Kanjorski.
Following his retirement from Wilkes University, Dr. Breiseth served as President of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute in Hyde Park, N.Y., an organization dedicated to preserving the Roosevelt legacy. This opportunity, along with journalist Kirstin Downey’s discovery of his essay about Frances Perkins, ushered in a role that he seemed destined to play: steward and champion of the New Deal.
He was involved in several organizations devoted to protecting the legacy of the New Deal, including the National New Deal Preservation Association in Santa Fe, N.M., and the Frances Perkins Center in Newcastle, where he served as a board member and board chair over a period of several years. He was also an active participant in an informal weekly policy “thinktank” meeting among a group of grandchildren of New Dealers, including June Hopkins, James Roosevelt, Scott Wallace, and Tomlin Perkins Coggeshall, Frances Perkins’ grandson.
He and Mrs. Breiseth moved to her family home in Ticonderoga, N.Y., in 2009. Following his wife’s death in 2012, Dr. Breiseth remained active in retirement in the Kiwanis Club, Torch Club, Ticonderoga Heritage Museum, Ticonderoga Historical Society, and activities related to Fort Ticonderoga. He participated in the Kiwanis food backpack program to combat local child hunger. He also stayed close to the Wilkes community, spearheading a project to conduct oral history interviews with Wilkes alumni, faculty, and trustees.
Dr. Breiseth will be remembered as a father figure, mentor, and source of wise counsel to innumerable students, colleagues, friends, and family members whose joys, sorrows, and dreams he shared over the years. He put relationships above personal interests and was his family’s biggest cheerleader. He had a savant-like memory for people and provided invaluable memories for family stories and oral history projects.
As a teacher and friend, he helped many people in his orbit dig more deeply into their own personal stories. He also enjoyed numerous moments of serendipity that he called “small world stories” over his lifetime that often opened new doors for him and others. In his last year, even as his energy declined, he welcomed a steady stream of visitors and calls, with his vigor replenished rather than drained by continual emotional and intellectual substantive connection.
He also accomplished the goal he identified when he received his leukemia diagnosis: to finish his memoir. Working hard alongside his family and a dedicated publishing team for several months, he published his memoir in May 2026 and enjoyed a book signing organized by his friends and neighbors just three weeks before his death. The memoir is titled “The Education pf Chris Breiseth: A Life of Service to Secure Our Multiracial Democracy Inspired by Lincoln, FDR, and Frances Perkins.”
During his final days, Dr. Breiseth continued working and engaging with others with a sense of purpose (and humor). He voted with gusto in the New York State primary just five days before his death. He was humbled and overwhelmed by the outpouring of love and care he received over the course of his illness, particularly from his neighbors and the nurses at the Ticonderoga Outpatient Clinic, whose patient he had been for several years.
Dr. Breiseth is predeceased by his wife, Jane; parents; sister, Nan Bentley; and brother, Jeff.
He is survived by his daughters, Abigail, Erika and her husband, William F. Brockman, of Baltimore, Md., and Lydia and her husband, Marco Vargas, of Arlington, Va.; grandchildren, Warner and Annika Brockman and Koralie Vargas; brothers, Alan and Greg Breiseth; and many cherished nieces and nephews.
A memorial service will be held at Putnam United Presbyterian Church in Putnam Center, N.Y. on Saturday, July 18, at 11 a.m. followed by a potluck reception.
A service will also be held at First Presbyterian Church in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. on Saturday, Aug. 15, at 11 a.m. followed by a reception.
Donations in Dr. Breiseth’s memory can be made to the Christopher and Jane Breiseth Scholarship Fund at Wilkes University and the Frances Perkins Center. Several of his talks, articles, and books are preserved on a website created by his family to sustain his legacy, christopherbreiseth.com.
