Charles Adams ’55

Charles died May 11, 2019, of Parkinson’s disease. He was born in Elmira, N.Y., in 1934.

He attended Princeton and earned a bachelor’s degree from Columbia and a master’s degree from Hofstra.

From 1958 until 1974 he was an English teacher on Long Island, later the principal of East Hampton High School. Hired as editor of the weekly Pennysaver News of Brookhaven, he then changed careers to journalism. In addition to writing news articles and managing the editorial staff, Charles wrote a column called “Adams Apple” for the Pennysaver and a column called “Loves and Revenges” for the Long Island Advance in Patchogue, where he and his wife, Mary Kate, raised their seven children.

The widely read “Adams Apple” column, written from the mid-1970s until 1990, touched not only on current events and politics, but on the activities of his family, who sometimes complained that their privacy had been invaded but who recognized how popular the column was. After a 16-year career in journalism on Long Island, Charles moved in the early 1990s to Shepherdstown, W.Va., across from where the battle of Antietam was fought in 1862. Adams then began writing a series of history books on the Civil War and on historical markers in Maryland and West Virginia.

In the early 2000s he relocated to southern Delaware and continued to write about local history. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2005 and later moved to Westport to be closer to family. He participated in the Parkinson’s Unity Walk in New York City’s Central Park and spoke often about dealing with the physical and mental problems caused by a disease that has no cure. “I’m 80 now and have Parkinson’s disease,” he wrote in 2014. “That’s a column. Or two. Or 10. But for somebody else to write.”