Reverend Professor Joseph V. Versage passed away peacefully on Friday, May 12, 2023, at age 98, at The Friendly Home, in Pittsford, New York. Reverend Versage lived a long life of devotion to his mother and father, his family, to service as an educator, having been a college professor for over 60 years, and to his churches and participants in his Catholic and Eastern Orthodox faith in the Rochester, New York area.
Joseph was born on July 8, 1924, to Vincent and Angelina Versage in Rochester, New York, His parents were immigrants to the United States from Italy. Joseph graduated from Brighton High School and was proudly the first of his family to attend college at Niagara University. After receiving his bachelor’s degree majoring in sociology and minoring in the Russian and German languages, he moved to New York City and enrolled in a masters program in sociology at Columbia University
where he studied under some of the most accomplished sociology professors in the nation. He then moved to Boston, Massachusetts where he participated in post-masters study at Harvard University under the teaching of Professor Talcott Parsons, one of the nation’s leading and famous sociology scholars. Following his studies at Harvard, Joseph accepted his first teaching employment at St. Basil’s College & Seminary in Stamford, Connecticut.
Joseph was then recruited to join the sociological faculty at the University of Dayton, in Ohio, where he taught for several years. While at Dayton, Joseph was chosen, as a result of his fluency in the Russian language, to be part of a select group of American academic scholars which accompanied then-Vice President Richard Nixon on an official U.S. diplomatic trip to Moscow in July, 1959. During this trip, Professor Versage and his colleagues met with their Russian higher educational counterparts and discussed sociological, cultural and political issues relative to the United States and the Soviet Union, and personally witnessed the highly publicized ‘kitchen debate” between Vice President Nixon and then-Soviet Premier Khrushchev at the American National Trade Exhibition at Sokolniki Park, Moscow.
In 1962, Joseph was recruited by Father Joseph Lavery, President of the newly established St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York, to join the sociology faculty there. Upon returning back to his hometown, Professor Versage went on to teach sociology at St. John Fisher for most of five decades, later becoming Dean of the Sociology Department and one of the leading sociologists in the nation. He was also a high-ranking member of Phi Gamma Mu, the national honor society for the social sciences. Along with his close friend and colleague, Dr. Joseph Polizzi, he co-wrote the scholarly book “Ghetto & Suburbia”, and studied extensively the causes of the civil rights protests and social unrest of the late 1960’s, personally viewing the protests and violent riots in Rochester. Professor Versage retired from St. John Fisher College after teaching over 50 years.
In 1986, Joseph, having worked extensively with Rochester’s Eastern Orthodox religious community, he was ordained an Eastern Orthodox deacon/priest and established a continuing ministry to hospital and nursing home patients and others in the Rochester area. After living in Brighton for many years and with failing health, Joseph moved to The Friendly Home in 2020. He and his family are forever grateful to all of the medical and nursing home staff in the Morgan Unit who cared for him with grace and professionalism in his last years.
Joseph is predeceased by his parents, Angelina and Vincent Versage, brother Sam Versage and sister-in-law, Olivia Versage. He is survived by his nieces and nephews, Vincent Versage, Cathleen & Michael Lesniewski, Ann Marie Turner (& Alan Kimberling), Joseph & Kathlene Versage and his grandnieces, Lauren and Alana Lesniewski, Emily and Madeline Turner, as well as Versage cousins, friends and many former students.
A private burial will be held at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery and a celebration of Joseph’s life will be held in Rochester, New York at a future date to be announced by the family