We are mourning the loss from the unexpected death of Joe Herget in the early hours of his sleep at his home on Stone Ridge Lane with his wife, Bimmie Herget, at his side in the morning, realizing he couldn’t wake up for breakfast and would never again wake up for anything on Aug. 10.

Along with the mourning, we began little by little celebrating his life that began with his birth from his mom, Emma Riccio Herget, and his dad, John Joseph Herget, on March 22, 1941, in Meriden, where he grew up and attended Mount Carmel Catholic Elementary School, Lincoln Middle School and graduated with the last class to graduate from Meriden High School.

When he was eight years old, his only sibling, James Peter Herget, was born and is still alive, living with his wife, Maureen Herget, in Norfolk, Massachusetts, and who has one grown son, Chris Herget, and has one granddaughter, Piper Herget.

At the end of high school in 1958, Joe entered Providence College in the class of 1962. In the fall of his second year at Providence he agreed to be one of three Providence guys to go on a completely blind date with two unknown women in West Hartford; upon arriving at the door where they were to meet their three unknown dates, Joe took charge and pressed the doorbell, went first through the opened door, saying, “I’m Joe Herget, he is John, and he is David; we are your Providence dates.” To which Francine, at whose home we were located, said, “Joe, you are the first to enter, and this is your date, Bimmie Barber.”

Little did either one know that in five- and one-half years they would get married on June 13, 1964, the week after Bimmie graduated from Sarah Lawrence College, and engage in a life adventure that would last until 16 months before their 60th wedding anniversary.

On Jan. 20, 1971, their first and only child, John Joseph Herget II, was born. John has been a much-loved part of Joe’s constant support, and John has, in turn, been with his wife Nicole Tatarris Herget and Joe’s two grandsons, Spencer, in his second year at Branford High School and Finn, in 8th grade at Walsh Intermediate School with his mother, Nicole who is the WIS school librarian have all loved and been a constant support in turn for this last year of Joe’s life.

When Joe graduated from Providence College in 1962, he was hired by The International Silver Company (IS) to be a part of a new training program to become an Executive by engaging in every department in the main office in Meriden. He also joined the CT National Guard to meet his requirement for service during the Vietnam War.

In December 1965, Joe told his boss he really believed he needed firsthand selling experience and wanted a general sales selling district and got the state of Pennsylvania and West Virginia. So, he and Bimmie moved to an apartment, in the same complex as the one his boss’s mother-in-law lived in, just outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Bimmie got a job in a small school south of Harrisburg that was next to the New Comberline Airforce Base. Joe spent three of every four weeks traveling to work in his territory and the fourth week working out of his home, visiting stores in the area where he lived.

In June of 1967, Joe was transferred into the Stainless Silver Division and placed in Cincinnati, Ohio. In April of 1968, we drove to Washington, D.C., to drop Joe off at the airport for him to fly to Puerto Rico for the week of the annual sales meeting at the newly built factory on that island. Bimmie was going to stay in D.C. with her brother Dr. Rod Barber (now deceased), and his newly born child, Bill Barber, the first of two children, the second Betsy Barber, born with his first wife Linda Dole Barber (now deceased). When they got onto the roundabout new highway of D.C., the radio interrupted with the announcement that Martin Luther King had been shot dead.

When she picked up Joe and expected to go back to their much-loved home in Cincinnati, Joe said they both needed, instead, to meet officers at IS in Meriden. The result was that Joe was called to work as a department head at the main office and moved back to Connecticut that June.

Thus, they bought their first house in Branford on Sible Avenue, one block from Long Island Sound, the way I had grown up in Madison as a child. They moved into 19 Sible Avenue just before Bimmie’s June 5 birthday when Joe woke her up with the reported news that Robert Kennedy had been shot dead in California like MLK in April.

They lived at 19 Sible Avenue for three years. In June, they bought their second house at 196 Totoket Road in Pine Orchard, across the street from the second hole tee off of the Pine Orchard Club and next to the path that went across the stream to Stony Creek and the woods of Juniper Point. And they moved in when their son, John, was 5 months old. They lived there for many wonderful years until they bought their third house at 36 Park Place across from where Joe’s parents lived in the newly built apartments called Rose Hill. There, they met Jim Bruno, who became best friends with Joe and his much-loved family, wife, Maggie, and daughters, Kate and Beth Bruno, who are still much loved.

Joe is much beloved by his only son, John Herget II; daughter-in-law, Nicolle Herget; grandsons, Spencer Herget and Finn Herget; brother, James Herget, and sister-in-law Maureen Herget of Norfolk, Massachusetts, their son, Chris Herget and Chris’s daughter, Piper Herget; cousin, Mary Ellen Riccio, of Madison; Joe’s nephew Chuck and wife, Joni Herget; and cousin, Howard Chapman in Charleston, SC, and Marilyn Chapman and her husband Bob Oates; and other cousins and in-laws in other states throughout the country.

The family chose cremation and a memorial service later at the Stony Creek Congregational Church in Stony Creek. Clancy Funeral Home at 244 North Main Street, Branford, has information posted.