Reverend Paul H. Sharar (’56)
Paul Sharar Obituary Paul H. Sharar, who spent decades with the YMCA creating pioneering programs for young people, veterans, and families while also shaping the organization s international work, died on August 12, 2025, in Glen Rock, N.J. He was 94.
Born on April 27, 1931, in Iowa, he grew up during the Great Depression, the son of Paul B. and Dorothy Sharar. His father, a school administrator, founded Clinton Community College; his mother was a teacher and community leader. Both believed deeply in education and service. Mr. Sharar recalled childhood summers on the Mississippi River, listening to the music of paddlewheel calliopes and watching barges and steamboats pass. In 1936, he ran to the tracks to see the first sleek yellow streamliner trains streak by at 90 miles an hour a symbol, he said, of a bigger world beyond Depression-era Iowa.
These early memories, he believed, shaped his lifelong fascination with people, places, and history. He earned a Bachelor of Arts from Ohio Wesleyan University, a Master of Divinity from Boston University where he studied at the same time as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and later a Ph.D. in organizational psychology from Columbia University s Teachers College. His dissertation, The Training Resources for Youth (TRY) Project (1969), became the blueprint for the nation s first Urban Job Corps center.
Based in Brooklyn, it combined vocational instruction with counseling and job placement and became a model for workforce development. Dr. Sharar began his YMCA career at the Ridgewood, N.J., branch, later moving to the Greater New York YMCA, where he directed the Counseling and Testing Service in Manhattan. During the violent summer of 1967, when Harlem was tense with unrest, his team provided counseling, recreation, and employment opportunities for young people, helping keep peace in the community. He developed programs for veterans returning from service, mothers receiving public assistance, and newly arrived immigrants.
Later, he helped design rehabilitation efforts for people recently released from New York prisons, reflecting his belief that institutions could help restore opportunity. From his office overlooking the Lincoln Tunnel in Manhattan, he often reflected on how the same highway began not far from his childhood home in Iowa a metaphor for the path his life had taken.
From there, he worked with colleagues around the world to expand cultural exchanges. With Don Wheeler and Japanese YMCA leaders such as the Honma family, he built enduring ties between Tokyo and New York, as well as Korea. He collaborated for more than fifty-five years with Dr. Winthrop Adkins, a Columbia University psychologist. Dr. Adkins wrote that their partnership defined much of both their careers, crediting Paul with vision, discipline, and unshakable integrity.
Mr. Sharar and his wife, Helen, lived a life of community service together. For decades they were active in the Ridgewood United Methodist Church and many nonprofit organizations. In later years, he was proud to serve on the Glen Rock Environmental Commission. Those who knew him described him as a spiritual man who lived by the golden rule. He was remembered for his warmth, his ready laugh, and his thousand-watt smile. He was the kind of person who not only asked how you were but genuinely wanted to know and then listened with patience and wisdom.
Beyond his professional work, Mr. Sharar pursued history, science, and the arts, and spent countless hours on genealogy. He believed in education as a force for human flourishing, echoing his father s vision that learning should bring the joy of accomplishment above and beyond the commonplace that might have been. Above all, he loved his family and time together at home in Glen Rock, on vacation and at family gatherings and celebrations. His children and grandchildren remembered that he never missed a performance, art show, or sporting event. His wife, Helen, predeceased him.
He is survived by his daughters, Kathryn Sharar Prusinski, Carol Sharar and her husband, Robert Lutz, Connie Sharar, and Linda Sharar and her wife, Cory Collins; his sister, Carol Straumanis; and grandchildren, Zephyr Prusinski, Griffin Conway, Maya Sharar, and Kennedy Sharar, as well as nieces, nephews, and extended family. A memorial service will be held at Ridgewood United Methodist Church, Ridgewood, NJ on Saturday, Sept. 13, 2025, at 10:30am.
In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to: Epic Inclusive Communities https://www.epicschool.org/programs/epic-foundation/ Paul B. Sharar Foundation https://eiccfoundations.org/paul-b-sharar-foundation/ YMCA https://www.ymca.org/donate To plant a beautiful memorial tree in memory of Paul Sharar, please visit our Tree Store. Read More