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 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. 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-