The second president of Warren County Community College, Byron L. Rinehimer doesn’t hesitate when asked about what drove a group of community leaders to take the first steps in building a college.
“It was really very simple,” he said. “We felt the young people in Warren County needed another opportunity to further their education nearby. They needed another path forward.”
With that mission and an office staff and faculty of about 10, Warren County Community College took shape in the fall of 1982—finding a home in the 1834 Cummins Building on the town square in Belvidere with makeshift classrooms popping up in any space available.
“My small office was in the basement of that building, and we were operating with limited space and resources, but we were enthusiastic about the college and what it meant for the area,” recalls Rinehimer.
Rinehimer was initially vice president at Warren during those first years, brought in by the school’s first president, N. Dean Evans, a World War II veteran, Episcopal priest, and lifelong educator.
“He was a kind man, very low-key. But he had some very innovative ideas,” retired Superior Court Judge Victor Friedman told the Burlington, Vermont, County Times in 2019 at the time of Evans’ death at 91-years-old.
A Grassroots Beginning
Initially, Sussex and Warren County leaders intended to work together to develop a community college, which state education officials were recommending for each county. Headlines in May 11, 1976, however, said that plan was “in limbo,” and about two years later the two counties decided to go it alone. By 1980, the state education department was backing both efforts.
Geralyn M. Gress, whose father, the late John J. Gress also played a key role in the founding of the college, recalls her family and Rinehimer storing and selling college textbooks out of Rinehimer’s garage in those early days.
Gress said that classes were initially held in neighboring high schools and other buildings throughout the county, and only in the evenings and on Saturdays.
“It was all very grassroots. But it got the college off the ground,” she said.
There was still a lot of planning and efforts to seek financial support, but the college eventually opened in Belvidere in the Cummins Building on the town square, which county records show it is now home to the Warren County Board of Elections and the Board of Taxation.
After two years, Evans approached a local developer and suggested that he construct a building with classrooms and office space for the college and lease it to the school. The developer agreed, and the college moved to Route 57 across the street from where the campus is located today.
Rinehimer said that, at first, the college was offering workforce training in electronics and engineering as well as academic courses to allow students to transfer to four-year schools. He worked to eventually develop transfer agreements with several four-year institutions, including Rutgers University and Lafayette College.
Rinehimer is now 99 and lives near Reading, PA. He noted that those preliminary students had varied interests and reasons for enrollment.
“Our students often were not sure about their future. Probably most didn’t know or realize what college was about. They came because of an opportunity. Some of them were real academic achievers right out of high school, and others were drifting and looking for direction. The college offered them a pathway forward.”
Growth and Vision
From its opening semester with about 300 students operating from a few offices in that historic building in downtown Belvidere and offering night and Saturday classes, the college has grown to enroll more than 3,300 students and now offers 31 associate degree tracks and nine certificate programs.
Along with those career-ready degrees, more than 2,000 high-school students take dual-enrollment courses at Warren while still in high school, and many of Warren’s graduates transfer to four-year-degree-granting institutions.
The college has already gained national recognition for its drone, robotics, and AI training programs and is now developing a new agricultural educational and training center to educate students in vocational agriculture and culinary studies. Its nursing-school graduates are highly recruited throughout the state, and its workforce training in a variety of additional fields places those students with top regional firms.
“I’m so honored to be the president of an institution that has grown and changed to follow the mission of its founders and provide an excellent, high-value, reasonably priced option for students,” said Warren President Will Austin, noting that county officials recently recognized the college and one of its first important boosters, Chuck Haytaian, a state assemblyman.
The college is this year preparing to pay tribute to its founders, a group that worked for two decades to bring the school to reality, and an initial board of trustees who started it on the right footing.
Noteworthy People and Programs
In recognition of the founders and the college’s success, Warren administrators are working on plans to honor the people who gave the college its start.
Gress notes that her father was on the steering committee that worked for 20 years on a plan for the college. He later became the vice president for its first board of trustees. According to Gress, it was a group of local community leaders who recognized the need for a local community college and worked to bring the institution to life.
She noted that—along with that steering committee—state assemblyman Chuck Haytaian played a key role in the development of the school as did the chairman of its first board of trustees, Charles Kwartler, a community leader who Rinehimer said was the perfect person for the job.
“My father, along with a group of other amazing and devoted and fearless people, worked together using all of their skills and dedication and formed the structure for the college and got it underway. The steering committee met on a regular basis and worked tirelessly to see the dream of a college become a reality in Warren County,” she said.
Gress recalled that when her father was ill and near death, Evans and other members of the board of directors came to his bedside and gave him a plaque marking his service.
President Austin said it was remarkable that civic-minded people saw the need for a college that could boost local students to another level of education and stronger career paths—and brought together the necessary and appropriate resources to open the doors to education for so many.
“It takes people with energy, resourcefulness, and a willingness to work hard to do something like this, to build a college,” he said. “And the staff and students here—and the community—owe them a debt of gratitude for their work.”
