Herman Erhard

Herman Hall Erhard, July 18, 1932 to July 30, 2015.

Herman was born on his father’s homestead a mile or two north of Happy’s Inn on Highway 2.

He attended the Trailor School established by the Libby School District on his father’s homestead through grade five.

The family left the homestead farm in 1943 and Herman went to schools in Spokane, Wash., and Portland, Ore., for grades six and seven. The family returned to Libby in 1945 and Herman went to Libby High School to start high school, but moved to Havre High School for his second and half of his third year but returned to Libby High School where he graduated in 1950.

Herman started college in Idaho in 1950 but had to drop out to work at J. Neils or Zonolite until he was drafted for Army duty in 1953. He served two years,  most of the time in France, and was honorably discharged in 1955.

After his Army service Herman worked several years for Boeing in Seattle, Wash., as an engineering assistant before returning to college at Bozeman, finally earning a bachelor of science degree in chemical engineering in 1962.

After graduation Herman first went to work in Salt Lake City, Utah, for a company producing rocket fuel. Herman proved to be very good at this job, and when the Salt Lake company lost their government contract he was recruited by United Technologies in San Jose, Calif., where he worked until his retirement in 1992.

Herman was best remembered at UTC for his design of the fuel system for the space shuttle solid state booster rockets. Herman designed and tested a system in his own garage on his own time to make these solid state rockets burn evenly for the whole time once they were ignited.

When the UTC completed their contract for these rockets, Herman was offered a position in UTC’s research department, but at the age of 60 and unmarried, he elected to take early retirement and return to Libby.

He bought several acres of land about eight miles from town on Bobtail Creek where he built a large shop stocked with many tools of all sorts where he worked on his many inventions. But he never worked to produce patents, it was just his hobby.

Although Herman never married, he does leave one son, born out of wedlock, whom he supported through high school and the first year of college and always remained in contact. This son, Gregg Erhard, met many of you at Herman’s memorial service at Happy’s Inn this August.

Herman also loved children and helped one struggling young couple raise their twin girls since they were toddlers. One of these girls, now past 30, attended his memorial service also.