Charles Price

Intrigued with Flight, Charles was a winged spirit. He was born in Garden City, Kansas, April 25, 1926, the fourth child of Charles Richard and Mary Agnes Price. His father operated an auto repair shop and his mother, a former schoolteacher, was known for her prize-winning cakes and popcorn balls. Charles attended school through the infamous Dust Bowl and got his exposure to printers ink early when he started work at the Garden City Kansas DAILY TELEGRAM. He advanced to the pressroom and mailroom while in high school and for years carried a paper route that included Gillespie Drive, the most prestigious section in southwest Kansas. It was during this time a local Main street photographer introduced Charles to the 4X5 Speed Graphic camera to photograph cattle. When not shooting bovine, he took pictures for the school yearbook. At graduation at the age of 17, Price reported to the all-black aviation cadet corps in Alabama volunteering for the Army Air Force even though he had never been in a plane nor driven a car. Between the years of 1941-1946, what the War Department termed the "Tuskegee Experiment", the training of black pilots for combat, produced 992 flyers, about a fourth of them bomber pilots. A total of 450 went to North Africa and Italy where they flew 15, 533 sorties and won 95 Distinguished Flying Crosses. Charles was commissioned October 16, 1945, and was training to join the 477 Bombardment Group headed by Col. Benjamin O. Davis Jr. Post training, he won his wings as a B-25 Bomber pilot at the famed Tuskegee Army Air Field; served two and a half years in the service, then discharged from active duty in 1946. He continued to serve fourteen years in the reserves where he was promoted to First Lieutenant. He had a twin-engine commercial pilot license. Following the war, he attended Pittsburgh State College for two years. Returning home, he enrolled in the journalism program at the University of Kansas. While attending school, he was on the staff of the UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN newspaper and interned at the Lawrence Kansas JOURNAL-WORLD. While at KU, he was president of Sigma Delta Chi a professional journalism fraternity, a member of Kappa Alpha Psi and the Congress of Racial Equality CORE. As an undergraduate at the University of Kansas before sit-ins made national headlines, Price participated when KU CORE members attempted to integrate a Lawrence Kansas movie theater. The movie was stopped and management announced "the move will not resume until the agitators leave." As an avid KU fan, 'ROCK CHALK JAYHAWK' was his battle cry and mantra during basketball seasons. Charles supported his alma mater throughout his life. In 1952, the same year he graduated with his BS degree from the William Allen White School of Journalism at KU, William O. Walker, then CALL & POST publisher, bought Price to Cleveland. He worked as a photographer there for nearly 6 years. In 1955, he took what was to have been part-time job at the parcel post annex, to supplement wages at the newspaper, a job for which he had gone to college. Still intrigued with "the wild blue yonder", Price left the newspaper and the post office, and in 1959 he joined the FAA as an air traffic controller at the former Cadillac Tank Plant at Hopkins Airport. However, after a year, he had enough of what he described "the most stressful job known to man". He was released from the FAA on medical leave and returned to the post office. Most of his postal career was in the mechanization and automation section of the Main Post office. He possessed an energetic, no-nonsense management style. After 33 years in 1986, he retired from the postal service as a mid-level manager. In 1957, he married Sara L. White of Oberlin Ohio. They had one daughter, Leslie Renee. They lived in the Lee-Harvard area in the same house in Cleveland for over 40 years before moving to a ranch style home in Bedford Heights. Both were very active in the senior community activities. Charles has a military remembrance brick outside Bedford Heights city hall. Price was a member of the National Association of Postal Supervisors where he wrote for the "ORACLE", the American Postal Workers Union and the Retired Postal Employees Association. He loved photography and had a great interest in trap shooting and traveling. After retiring, he was a part-time volunteer for Project: LEARN. For those that knew Charles, they experienced his keen wit, passion for photography and Tuskegee Airman History, and his exuberant sense of humor. His pension for sneaking in a joke during a simple conversation would leave his audience surprisingly engulfed with laughter. He enjoyed instant entertainment of whistling a familiar tune especially while tinkering on his latest project in the garage. He was an avid reader; enjoying the Plain Dealer everyday from front to end. He often shared is passion for decorum and knowledge by writing letters to the editors on a regular basis. He tried to embrace technology by keeping in touch with college classmates via email and sending links and doing 'research', but loved to write and receive letters, which he kept along with magazine and newspaper 'clippings'; filed for every event and important subject of his life. He signed every email with the following: "Once you've tasted flight, you'll forever walk the earth with eyes turned skyward, for there you've been and there you will always long to return" da Vinci Besides his wife Sara fondly called Sue survivors include his daughter Leslie Neville Gittens of Castro Valley California, a sister, Betty Jane Evans, of Parksville British Columbia, and several nieces and nephews. Brothers Alva Price and George Price, deceased. Special thanks to the Cleveland Clinic Hospital and Hospice Services. Funeral Services will be held at Brown-Forward, 17022 Chagrin Blvd., Shaker Hts., OH 44120 on Friday July 6th at 11 AM. Friends may call one hour prior to the service, from 10 to 11 AM.


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