Charlie Meredith dies at 85
The former Quakertown Free Press publisher was a longtime Bucks County philanthropist.
News 13
Charles “Charlie” Meredith III, the former owner and publisher of the Quakertown Free Press and a longtime Bucks County philanthropist, died Friday, his family said. He was 85
Meredith’s family and friends described him as a Renaissance man and captivating storyteller whose generosity knew no bounds.
“He lit up every room he entered,” daughter Catherine Meredith said Saturday. “He lived at least two lifetimes in one.”
Meredith’s family owned the weekly Free Press from 1910 to 1997, and he followed his grandfather and father in publishing the newspaper from 1969 until The Morning Call’s former parent company, Times-Mirror, acquired it. The paper ceased publishing in 2009.
During its heyday, The Free Press was the main source of information for most residents of Quakertown. It doggedly covered big controversies, like the borough’s decision to stop producing its own electricity in 1951, and small stories, like a 50th wedding anniversary or Rotary Club meeting. When people thought of local news, they thought of The Free Press.
“The community newspaper is a historian. And it’s the cheerleader,” Charles Meredith said in a 2008 oral history interview. “It promotes the area. It rallies the troops when things are difficult, praises them when things go well, criticizes them when things do not.”
In addition to running the Quakertown newspaper, Meredith founded the Emmaus Free Press and the Indian Valley Echo. He served as president of the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association and was a director in the American Newspaper Publishers Association, rubbing shoulders with leaders of The New York Times and Washington Post.
In later years, he was a columnist for The Morning Call and for the Bucks County Herald.
Agraduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, Meredith rose to captain of the Philadelphia City Troop in the Pennsylvania Army National Guard, was elected to the Bucks County Board of Commissioners and became master of Quakertown’s Masonic fraternity — all by age 30.
Meredith also sang around the world with the Berkshire Choral International and with The Philadelphia Singers.
And following a quadruple bypass surgery in his mid-40s, Meredith would drive from his Quakertown home to Boathouse Row five days a week to row on the Schuylkill River.
“Charlie was Superman,” said lifelong friend J. Lawrence “Larry” Grim, who led the Grim, Biehn & Thatcher law firm in upper Bucks County. “He was just the most incredible, wellrounded person who touched everyone he met.”
As a columnist, Meredith liked to “stir the pot” as a means of provoking debate and dialogue, Catherine Meredith said.
But he was open-minded. Daughter Anne Meredith said she was the first avowed Democrat in the family, and probably the first openly gay person he knew once she came out to her parents in the mid-1980s.
“He was stunned, but two months later, he was marching down Fifth Avenue with me and my then-girlfriend, now-wife in New York City’s Pride Parade,” Anne Meredith said. “He viewed the world in an incredibly expansive, inclusive way.”
Meredith was an advocate of the Upper Bucks YMCA, and when it fell on hard financial times, he helped raise money and awareness through the Free Press.
He was also president of the Quakertown Rotary, chairperson of the East Penn AAA and a director of Quakertown National Bank (now QNB Bank), among other community endeavors.
Meredith’s wife of 60 years, Mary Elizabeth “Betsy” Meredith, died in September. In addition to Anne and Catherine, they are survived by a son, Charles “Ty” IV, and grandchildren Grace and Charles “Quint” V.