Miles Charest ’48

Miles died July 29, 2012, in Baltimore. He was 86.

At Princeton he majored in history, and was active in WPRU and the Press Club. He served in the Navy in the Philippines from 1944 to 1946 and in the Marine Corps from 1950 to 1952.

After graduating from Princeton in 1950, he earned a master’s degree in Russian from Windham College and a master’s degree in French from Middlebury College. He was a teacher of French, Russian, and Spanish at Shady Side Academy in Pittsburgh and at several other schools in the Northeast, retiring in 1990.

Miles was a longtime volunteer reader for the blind, and, while in the Princeton Club of Washington, D.C., was a regular participant in Annual Giving fundraising. He belonged to United World Federalists; had a large collection of classical, jazz, and rock recordings; and played tennis. In Going Back, our 50th-reunion book, Miles wrote that he hoped the University “will help America and the world become much more tolerant. First-rate universities like Princeton should be doing all they can to graduate people capable of working with others for improvement of all segments of society.”