"Elise Lenora Wolff was born in New York City on July 16, 1935. She attended elementary schools P.S. 28 and P.S. 117, and William H. Taft High School in the Bronx, New York. In August of 1953, Elise enrolled at the University of Bridgeport, Connecticut, and graduated in the Spring of 1957 with a Bachelor of Science degree. Elise embarked upon her teaching career as a third grade teacher in Fairfield, Connecticut, at the Nathan Hale Elementary School in the Fall of 1957. The following year, she moved to Westchester, New York, where she enjoyed a variety of teaching experiences.
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.