Eugene Edward “Gene” Hertzog was born in Oakpark, Illinois in 1932 and spent his childhood in Upper Derby, Pennsylvania. At the age of seventeen, Hertzog contracted polio and was unable to completed high school. After recovering from the disease, Hertzog obtained his GED and joined the United States Army in 1949. For nine years, he served as a military photographer stationed in Japan and finally in Albuquerque, New Mexico where he met his first wife, Magdalene Tefoya. The couple married in November 1957 and had one son, Wayne Alan.
Midbar Kodesh is a Conservative Jewish temple founded in Henderson, Nevada in 1995 by former members of Temple Beth Sholom. Population growth and physical expansion of real estate warranted the establishment of the second Conservative congregation in Southern Nevada, whose name means “Holy Desert.” Temple Beth Sholom was moving to the west side of the valley, and a group of families- the Kaminskys, Goldmans, Rothmans, Simons, Goldsteins, and Feldmans, decided to start a new temple on the east side.