Harry W. Nerhood; Former Whittier College Professor

Harry W. Nerhood, 87, a former Whittier College professor and expert on Quaker history. Nerhood taught history at the school from 1936 to 1975 and later taught special classes during the 1980s. Childless, the educator once told a college historian that his thousands of students were his sons and daughters. He described a teacher’s job as “to move a student out of a rut and get him thinking about things. If you take a student and don’t stir him up one way or another, you’re not doing your job.” In 1985, Whittier College established the Harry W. Nerhood Award for Teaching Excellence, and in 1986 chose him as the recipient. Nerhood was often sought out as an expert on the history of Whittier, founded in 1887 largely by members of the Religious Society of Friends (known as Quakers), and of Whittier College, named for the Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier. On Saturday in Whittier.