Frederick John LaVergne peacefully passed away at the age of 59 on February 4, 2022 at Jersey Shore Medical Center in Neptune New Jersey after years battling cancer.  Taken way too soon, at his end when he took his last breath he was surrounded by family.  It is no small irony that the literal day of his passing – February 4, 2022 – had already been designated as “World Cancer Day 2022” by the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC), the oldest and largest cancer organization in the world, dedicated to uniting the global cancer community to promote equal access to quality care worldwide and achieving a cancer-free world.  Even in death Fred continued with his selflessness and unconditional giving to others.  An organ donor, his corneas were harvested and now will give literal sight – and perhaps in some way also Fred’s unique view of the world – to a blind person that will now have the renewed gift of sight.          

Fred graduated from Shore Regional High School in West Long Branch as a National Merit Scholar where he ran cross country and played soccer.  At his high school graduation ceremonies Fred rebelled by wearing orange colored socks, something the school administrators were not at all happy about, which somehow ballooned into an international controversy of sorts that included vast media coverage and even Pulitzer Prize winning American cartoonist Gary Trudeau dedicating a Doonesbury comic strip to the “controversy” of Fred and his orange socks.  This was “controversy” in the more innocent times of his youth.  Fred thereafter attended Stockton State College (now University) majoring in Biology. Fred developed his love and fascination for environmental science at the Stockton Center for Environmental Research while working there as a field instructor in marine science, environmental science and geology, and as a lab instructor and classroom tutor in biology, physics and chemistry.  Fred was greatly influenced in High School by teacher / coach Nancy Williams, a Title IX pioneer who herself effectively fought for the rights of women athletes to equal opportunity in sports at all levels of education.  Understanding the times then, it needs to be understood that there were very few opportunities in sport for women, and specifically there was no women’s soccer team or program whatsoever at Stockton.  In what many friends still believe is an implausible urban legend but is actually a literally true story, while still in college, Fred, an athlete and avid soccer player and fan himself, co-founded and himself served as the first ever coach of the Stockton Women’s Soccer Club (“SWSC”).  Fred pestered and was ultimately able to convince his friend and mentor, Vera King Farris, the then (and first women) President of Stockton, to propose to the Board of Trustees that the sport program be expanded to include a formal Women’s Intercollegiate Soccer program.  President Farris strongly supported the idea and in turn “dragged” (almost literally) several of the reluctant and skeptical members of the Board of Trustees to attend and watch a SWSC game against the Glassboro (now Rowan) unofficial Women’s Soccer Club.  After that game President Farris got her way, and in a little more than ten years in 1995, the now official N.C.A.C. sanctioned “Lady Ospreys” Women’s Soccer Team reached the Division III Eastern College Athletic Conference “final four” with Stockton hosting the tournament.  For having achieved such success, then Coach Roy Wilkins described retired College President Farris’s continued enthusiasm for the program:  “… Former Stockton President (Vera) King Ferris came to me after the Final Four and said ‘we’re going to build you a field and a field house.’ All that facility you see at Stockton, was directly related to those women.”  And unknown to most, all of this started with Fred and his fighting insistence on a world where women should be treated equally and fairly.      

After graduation Fred continued his formal education on the graduate level in microbiology/molecular genetics at the Selman Waksman Institute of Microbiology at Rutgers University.  He supported his studies as a research and teaching specialist by performing research in ovarian cancer in the OB/GYN department at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, and while there he helped construct the State’s first comprehensive database of genetic disorders in neonates, in cooperation with the Genetic Counseling Unit in Newark, a project conducted with the intention of identifying local environmental factors as a cause of specific birth defects.  His strong hard science background and reputation among his peers resulted in his being asked to serve on the NAMS (Natural and Mathematical Science Program) Faculty Review Board at his alma mater.  Despite his later change in career to meet the financial realities of raising a family, he nevertheless continued to be invited to return every year to his alma mater Stockton for the next 30+ years to serve as a judge in the New Jersey Shore Science Foundation’s Science Fair.  His love of science influenced his daughter Jeanne-Marie who herself would go on to obtain a Masters Degree in Biology from Northwestern University in Chicago, and who continues to work directly in her science field of expertise.  However, Fred wanted to get married and raise a family in the suburbs, and the daily commute to Newark from his new home in Delanco, coupled with the anemic level of salary then paid to research scientists in academia, compelled him to seek a research position in private industry in the much closer Philadelphia.  While searching for this new job in Philadelphia Fred took a “temporary” position as a car salesman at Willingboro Chrysler-Plymouth to pay the bills.  Finding the income derived from selling cars and minivans and recreational vehicles to families higher than expected, he simply stayed there as that was what was best for his family.  So as with many things in life, temporary things have a way of evolving into permanent situations.  He was always well known and readily identifiable as a regional salesman by his always wearing “red suspenders”, a personal trademark of sorts. Twenty years of auto sales and 5 children later he found himself still there.  During this time Fred was active as a member in a local Freemasonry Lodge, also using what limited free time he did have and dedicating what time he could find to such activities as surf fishing and his active membership in the “Beach Buggy Association”,  gardening, fine woodworking, serving as a Boy Scout leader (his son Sean ultimately achieved the rank of Eagle Scout), playing billiards, playing the Guitar (both the 6 string and 12 string) and Harmonica, tracing family history through genealogy, and listening to his favorite music from artists James Taylor, Neil Young and the Eagles.  After more than 20 years in car sales Fred then professionally transitioned from auto sales to Mortgage sales.

Unknown to many was Fred’s love of animals and his compassionate treatment of all of living things.  He once even rescued a deer hit by a car, putting the injured animal into his own car and taking it home and nursing it back to health before releasing it back into the wild several days later.  He did the same thing with a little fox, and with countless other stray or injured animals.  His own pet was a stray kitten he adopted and named Houdini.  His charity to others and to animals was boundless, something few people knew, because he used to say humbly that “Charity in the public eye or for public consumption is not charity at all consistent with Christian teachings, it is merely self promotion.”  Suffice it to say that there is a lot that the public will never know in this regard, as he wanted.          

Fred will most likely be remembered by many as a lifelong Democrat, political and civil rights activist, and Candidate for Congress.  In direct and immediate response to the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Citizen’s United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010) where the Court ruled that corporations have a First Amendment right to donate unlimited amounts of money to the political process and party bosses – a decision he and many others disagreed with – he, his brother and close friends Leonard P. Marshall, Scott Neuman and Allan J. Cannon formed a protest movement, the “Democratic-Republican Organization of New Jersey”, to be used as a vehicle to bring legal challenges in State and Federal Courts to specifically identified unconstitutional discriminatory voting and election laws and campaign finance laws that gave power to “political bosses” at the expense of the electorate.  Fred and others actually had to run as third party candidates to obtain legal standing to bring these legal challenges.  Many of these cases were published as precedent, and several of these were won and operated to promote positive social change.   Fred himself was lead plaintiff in a case in Federal Court in Washington D.C. that went all the way up to the United States Supreme Court for review.  The Democratic-Republican Organization ultimately consisted of a huge diverse membership of persons from throughout the nation with very diverse political views ranging from “the most liberal of the liberals to the most conservative of the conservatives”, but all of whom believed that the present national political system was “broken” and needed to be fixed.

In 2016, with the invaluable help and support of his close friends and supporters Ron Dash, Patricia Lindsay-Harvey, Dr. Arthur Crawford and his faithful intern John Pfisterer, Fred won a landslide victory in a contested Democratic Primary against the wishes of certain compromised and corrupt political bosses, wining the right to be the Democratic Party’s candidate for Congress in District 3.  Thereafter, running with his running mate for President former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Fred ultimately lost a somewhat close and hotly contested General Election to the incumbent Republican.  It was then that Fred’s long battle with cancer started.  Literally the night before the November 8, 2016 General Election Fred was first hospitalized with what at that time was unexplained pain, having to cast his own vote for himself and the Democratic ticket the next day from a hospital bed by hastily arranged emergency proxy and specifically obtained Court Order.   After he was diagnosed with cancer Fred still expected to “beat” the cancer and in fact had planned on running for Congress as the Democratic candidate again two years later in 2018.  As circumstances developed, and though not publically disclosed as the reason at the time, the real reason why Fred stepped back and did not run again in 2018 was cancer.  The Democrat who received the Democratic nomination in place of Fred, Andy Kim, would go on to win the General Election to the Congress where he serves to this day.  Others personally more selfish than Fred subject to such circumstances might have bitterly resented Andy Kim for having what many supporters considered and stated would surely have been “Fred’s seat in Congress” but for cancer intervening.  Fred would hear none of this, replying that “it was not about him”, that it was never “his seat”, it was and always should be the “people’s seat”, and that “there is a reason for everything whether we understand it or not”.  And he was proven correct once again, for after the bloody January 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol it to be none other than modest Congressman Andy Kim from New Jersey District 3 who, all alone late that evening, was found picking up the garbage and broken pieces of democracy in the Capitol, a symbol if there ever was one.  Fred thereafter moved to District 2 and had hoped to regain his health and run for Congress against the incumbent Republican there this year in 2022.  But God had other plans.  

Most recently even though sick Fred was integrally involved in a long ongoing labor of love project with his brother and close friends Lenoard P. Marshall, Allen J. Cannon and Scott Neuman who through a non-profit have already acquired a large Victorian Mansion Port Norris which is being renovated and within about a year will finally be opened and continued on perpetually as the academic and educational non-profit “LaVergne Center for the Study of Politics and American Constitutional History”, within which there already is a rare books and manuscripts library and will be the very large “Leonard P. Marshall Exposition Room” for the holding of events, seminars and classes.  Once open the LaVergne Center will be available to be use by persons and groups of all political affiliations, as long as their goal is to educate, inform and promote the public good in a manner that is consistent with democratic principles and the United States Constitution.  It goes without saying that it is heartbreaking to his brother and family and friends that Fred will not be physically present when the ribbon is finally cut and the doors opened to the public.                

Fred is survived by his parents Frederick Raymon LaVergne and Dorothy Ella LaVergne of West Long Branch and his Aunt Lorraine Claire LaVergne of Colts Neck, his children Katherine Mary Lourenco and her Husband Elio Lourenco of Glendora, Anne Elizabeth LaVergne and her fiancée Joseph Harris both of Runnemede, Sean Frederick LaVergne of Tuckerton, Jeanne-Marie LaVergne of Madison, Wisconsin, and Megan Madeline LaVergne of Dorothy, his former wife, the mother of his five children, Mary Louise Kennedy of Dorothy, a brother Eugene Martin LaVergne of West Long Branch, his twin sisters Dorothy Ella Loining and her husband Troy Melvin Loining of Middletown and Erica Lorraine Wells and her husband John Wells of Howell Township, nieces and nephews Taylor Brianna Loining of Middletown, Maxwell Melvin Loining, U.S.C.G. and his partner Hannah Fisher of Alexandria Bay, New York, Rachel Erica Loining of Middletown, Ryan David Wells and his partner Carly Abbate of West Long Branch, Victoria Lorraine Wells of Howell and her partner Nicholas Kapsalis of Staten Island, New York, Melissa Jean Wells (his Goddaughter) of Howell and her partner Vincent Maffucci of Bloomfield, Carter William LaVergne (his Godson) and Remy Nicole LaVergne, both of Tinton Falls, two grandchildren Arthur Alexander Lourenco and William Michael Lourenco and his grandniece Olivia Brooke Wells-Maffucci, and his very close personal friend Marianne Abbruzzi Alterisio Hickok of Howell.

Visitation will be held at the Old First United Methodist Church in West Long Branch on Thursday February 17, 2022 at 2:00 p.m. to be directly followed by a memorial service in the Church at 3:00 p.m.  A separate private family interment ceremony will be held at the Mount Carmel Cemetery Columbarium in West Long Branch on a later date.

Arrangements have been provided by the Woolley-Boglioli Funeral Home, 10 Morrell Street, Long Branch, New Jersey 07740 which his family gratefully thanks.     

In lieu of flowers donations may be made to the Funny Farm Rescue & Sanctuary, 6908 Railroad Boulevard, Mays Landing, New Jersey  08330, attention Laurie Zaleski.  The Funny Farm Rescue & Sanctuary may also be contacted at (609) 742-9410 or for more information visit  www.funnyfrmrescue.org .