Herbert Furniss Kincey, Jr.

OBITUARY

Herbert Furniss Kincey, Jr.-

12/12/1934 - 3/10/2026

Herb Kincey was an outdoorsman, teacher, and a pillar of the Santa Fe

community. Over his more than 50 years in the city, he helped hundreds

find their way by helping to found the St. Johns College Search and Rescue

Team and opening his home to anyone who needed a place to live.

Throughout his life, he was kind, thoughtful, and caring.

Herb, son of Sara Bayne Kincey, and Herbert Furniss (Mike) Kincey, and

younger brother of Sara Kincey Jones (all now deceased), was born in

Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1934 and grew up in the Eastover

neighborhood, where he was known as Sonny. His early schooling included

Eastover Elementary and Alexander Graham Bell Junior High. He then

attended Woodberry Forest School outside Orange, Virginia, for four years,

during which he played football, wrestled, and served as a prefect his senior

year (1952-53). After a stint at Davidson College, Herb attended the

University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, graduating in 1959 with a degree in

English Literature. He pledged the N.C. Theta chapter of Sigma Alpha

Epsilon Fraternity (SAE) at Davidson in 1953 and continued his fraternity

involvement with the N.C XI Chapter of SAE at UNC, including serving as

chapter president in 1959. Some additional time during those years was

spent at Mars Hill University and Indiana University.

Herb’s outdoor career began in 1961 while working for 3 years at Camps

Sequoyah & Tsali (no longer in existence) in the western North Carolina

mountains, holding several staff positions there, eventually including

assistant director. From Camp Sequoyah, Herb moved on in 1964 to spend 6

years as a staff member at newly opened Outward Bound schools in the

Colorado Rockies and in North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains. During this

time, he also briefly served on the staff of two Outward Bound schools in

Great Britain: The Eskdale Mountain School in northern England and the

Aber Dovey School on the coast of Wales. This trip also included a month[1]long stay at the British Army Outward Bound School outside Kristiansand, Norway

In 1971, 2 years after relocating from North Carolina to Santa Fe, Herb

opened a home-based outdoor shop, Peak & Plain Outfitters, specializing in

backpacking, climbing, survival, and technical rescue gear. Also in 1971,

Herb attended the first EMT course taught in New Mexico and then went on

to teach EMT, First Responder, and CPR courses until 1994. During this

period, both the Los Alamos National Lab and the U.S. Customs Aviation

Unit, Western Branch, hired Herb to teach wilderness survival courses.

For 37 years, Herb was a member of the St. Johns College Search and

Rescue Team, Santa Fe, which he helped found in 1971. In the early days,

he served as a training officer for the team. In addition, Herb was also an

active member of the New Mexico Civil Air Patrol for forty years. He held

many staff positions during that time and participated in numerous CAP air

search and rescue missions across the state, going back to the days when

there were few emergency locator transmitters installed in private aircraft,

making searches more difficult and lengthier.

Other organizations with which Herb was affiliated over the years included:

the Boy Scouts of America, Los Alamos Mountaineers, American Alpine Club,

Sierra Club, New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, Appalachian Mountain Club,

AMC Hetmans’ Association, Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce, the Santa Fe

Council on International Relations, the Wilderness Medical Society, Outward

Bound, and Camps Sequoyah & Tsali.

In the nineteen seventies, eighties, and nineties, Herb made several

climbing trips with St. Johns College students and other friends to the 3 big

Mexican volcanoes: Popocatepetl (now closed to climbers) Iztaccihuatl, and

El Pico de Orizaba, Orizaba being the highest at about 18,800 ft. In more

recent years, he engaged in less physically demanding activities, visiting

countries in various parts of the world, mostly with his good friend and

traveling pal, Carmel Davis.

Since about 2005 Herb’s outdoor activities and foreign travel were limited

due to ongoing medical problems. However, in addition to looking after

Skeeter, a beautiful female Lab mix he owned jointly with close friend, Colin

Willis, Herb also spent time reading a wide variety of books, writing

memoirs, and staying in touch with old and new friends, mostly thanks to

Facebook. His partially completed blog can be reviewed at

. Herb was a strong believer in a brief passage from the

poem, Ulysses, written by Alfred Lord Tennyson: “I am a part of all that I

have met”.

Although the members of Herb’s immediate family have all passed on, he

had two nieces: Lane Morgan (husband Billy,) in Texas with 3 adult children;

and Lyra Gapper (partner Raul), in South Carolina with 2 adult children; as

well as several cousins and other relatives, mostly living in and around

Selma, Alabama.

At Herb’s request, there will be no formal funeral service. There will be a

memorial service at Rivera Funeral Home 417 Rodeo Rd. in Santa Fe, N.M.

on April 9, 2026, at 2pm. He asks that some of his ashes be scattered in

the mountains east of Santa Fe by friends, and the remainder be placed in

the Kincey burial plot located in Charlotte. Herb also recommends readers

go climb a mountain, take in the full moon as it rises over Atalaya Peak,

explore a cave, run a river, adopt a pet, dance the night away, or head off

somewhere exotic on a sailing adventure. Herb once said, “It’s a big old

world out there just waiting to be explored. Do it while you are young and

strong.”

Donations may be made in Herb’s memory to St. John’s College

Advancement, PO Box 715905, Philadelphia, PA 19171-5905; to Woodberry

Forest School, 898 Woodberry Forest Road, Woodberry Forest, VA 20000; to

Sigma Alpha Epsilon Foundation, P.O. Box 4543, Carol Stream, Il 60197-

4543

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