Obituaries by Jim Nicholson
© Philadelphia Daily News (PA)

SR. MARY CLEMENT, TEACHER

Services were held yesterday for Sister Mary Clement, I.H.M., whose vitality and verve made her a treasured personality in the church and community and one who transcended age and station. Sister Mary Clement, who died Monday, was 89 and a resident of Camilla Hall, Immaculata, Chester County.

It was Jan. 2, 1916, when Frances Gallagher of Mount Carmel, Pa., entered the order of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. She took her vows on July 16, 1919, and her final vows Aug. 15, 1924. From 1920 until 1984, she was a teacher at 21 different schools.
She was a nun who immersed herself deeply into the lives of everyone she met. And despite seven decades of service, she never reached any twilight years. Those closest to her said "Sister Clem," as she was known in "The Community," was going full tilt until almost the last day.

A 1927 graduate of Immaculata College, Sister Mary Clement demanded excellence in the classroom. She gave it her best and she wanted the best in return. For openers, a youngster standing before her had to have combed hair and shined shoes.

She was one of the last nuns still to carry a "clicker," a wooden apparatus that was spring-loaded to produce a clicking sound. It was the equivalent of a judge's gavel. She would start clicking as she approached her room, and by the time she passed through the door the room was silent and waiting.

Youngsters in her classes might have felt they too were entering an order of sorts. Most got new names after a few days. A tall, gangling youth might be given the name "Big Gawk." Another student, who was quick to respond to her questions, whims and wishes, would be tagged as "Apple Shiner." Everyone had a second name too - "Sweetheart."

Apple Shiner now goes by the name of the Rev. Joseph C. McLoone.

"She would say, 'We're playing the game my way.' There was no questioning it," said McLoone. "She had a loud voice, a hearty laugh and a sense of humor. She taught for many years at Incarnation. She was the type of person who everyone always knew and was always around and full of life. She didn't fit the regular nun bill. She was involved in everything. She could tell you what was going on in everyone's life. Even in later days, teen-agers and young people would go back to tell her that they were getting married, who they were marrying. They had great respect for her from how she influenced them"

In the seminary, McLoone would get cards and letters from "Sister Clem" with money and stamps enclosed for him to call and write his mother often.

He said that after he was ordained, at the reception, "There was one line of people to talk to me and one line just to talk to her."

Sister Carol Ann, a close friend of Sister Mary Clement, recalled: "Clem
went to his ordination party afterward. When she walked into the room her table was bombarded with people. Crowds of young people around age 20 and early 30s. A whole crowd she had wrapped around her finger joined her. Each one had their story to tell, things done to them in school."

She taught at Incarnation of Our Lord School at 4th Street and Lindley Avenue for 26 years. It was there that she became very close to three much younger nuns also teaching there. They were Sisters James Eileen, Carol Ann and Ann Colleen. Despite an age difference of more than 40 years between Sister Clem and the next oldest, the chemistry among them was irresistible. They laughingly called themselves, "The Fabulous Four."

"She came through to us and showed us what living community life can be all about," said Sister James Eileen, "living in a community together, as a group of women spending our lifetimes teaching children and still be happy with each other." She also said Sister Clem was the most "charismatic" nun she had ever met.

Going home on visits, Sister Clem had met Sister James Eileen's mother, Mary Friel, and they became friends. Each morning between 9:30 and 10, Sister Clem would call Mary Friel in Narberth and they would chat. Both their mothers had come from Ireland.

"Clem and her were great buddies," said Sister James Eileen. "How my mother waited for those calls every day." Mary Friel wouldn't wash her hair or vacuum between 9:30 and 10 so she wouldn't miss hearing the phone.

Sister Carol Ann said that she and the others at Incarnation would often
draw on Sister Clem's vast experience in dealing with teaching problems. She once asked Sister Clem how to talk to parents about a slow child who might have to repeat a grade. Sister Carol Ann said she was concerned about what could be an impending confrontation.

Sister Clem replied: "Be honest and tell them that you're interested in their child. As long as you're interested in their children the parents will trust you and cooperate with you."

Around 1984, Sister Carol Ann was transferred to St. Joseph's in Downingtown, Sister James Eileen went to St. Charles in Drexel Hill, and Sister Ann Colleen was assigned to St. Alice's in Upper Darby. She had always said, "When you girls leave, I'm leaving too." When the "Fabulous Four" broke up, Sister Clem decided to retire. She also wanted to go to Camilla Hall while she was in good health. It proved to be much more than a retirement for Sister Clem. In fact, she may have carried out one of her most important assignments, though she and the archdiocese did not know it at the time.

Sister Clem became an energizing force at Camilla Hall.

Inevitably, some nuns suffer the same post-retirement depression people in other occupations feel when a life packed with service is suddenly stopped, when illness, infirmity or bureaucratic decision order the afterburners to be shut off and an individual is shunted into some form of storage. However meaningful and pleasant the system tries to paint it, the psyche knows.

Slumping nuns were a clear target for Sister Clem. Walking briskly down the
halls, she would poke her head in a door and in a no-nonsense tone say, ''C'mon. Get out of your bad mood." In a few minutes she could have anyone laughing or engrossed in a story she was telling or the latest word on the grapevine.

Sister Elizabeth Seton watched it all and told Father McLoone how Sister Clem would sit at a supper table and have everyone perked up with news of who was marrying who and who was going out with who and whose child accomplished what. She was the eternal optimist who wouldn't let a negative thought pass her lips, said Sister Carol Ann, who added that, "By the time you get to be her age, she would say exactly what she thought. She came out with some really funny things."

In bed by about 7 p.m., she awoke each morning at 3 a.m., several hours before morning prayers. For several hours a day she worked in the laundry folding sheets. She was happy that she had good health and would tell McLoone that "I'm not an old girl like some of the old girls in here." To the end she could still dispatch a hoagie - one of her favorite foods - with ease.

After dinner each night, she would excuse herself with "I have to go feed the old girls." She would then help feed a nun younger than herself. She was feeding them and working until the day before she suffered a stroke last month.

When McLoone visited, Sister Clem would introduce each individual nun as ''the greatest" or "the best." He said, "She made everyone feel important." If someone gave her a box of candy, the next person who saw her got a present of a box of candy.

She would sometimes tell stories of the distant past, but she was not tied to it. Last November the order amended the traditional headpiece so a bit of hair would show in the front. Sister Clem was the first of the older nuns to wear it. Others followed suit.

Sister James Eileen said Sister Clem lived what old Irish friends wished upon each other; "Get a great share out of life."

At the foot of her casket at her funeral yesterday, was a vase with four long-stemmed yellow roses. The card said it was from "The Fab Four," Sisters Carol Ann, James Eileen and Ann Colleen.

A nun asked who was the fourth, and Sister James Eileen looked toward the casket and said, "That was Clem."

She is survived by a niece, Mary Frances.

Contributions may be made to Sisters, I.H.M., Camilla Hall Infirmary, Immaculata, Pa. 19345.
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HERBERT SPEACH, 59

Herbert "Herbie" Speach, a man who cashed in without the world owing him a dime, died Wednesday. He was 59 and lived in West Philadelphia.

Herbie Speach lived until he died. He was a man's man, a ladies' man and a man for all occasions.
He propelled himself through 59 years on a throttle that had only two settings: stop - to sleep - and wide open. And if he traveled fast, he also traveled first class. That's the kind of letter carrier he was for 38 years, seven months and three days. He was a mailman who didn't simply deliver letters, he presented them.

Carolyn Speach-Terry, his daughter, said, "He was one of those super- conscientious mailmen. His shift began at 6 and he would get to work at 4 a.m. On rainy days he carefully wrapped the mail in plastic to keep it dry." One Christmas his tips topped $600.

In 1978 he was hit by a car while on his route. His hip was fractured and he was left with two permanently bad knees. He went back to work on a cane. It was his choice. He could have taken a sorter job or desk. But he was a letter carrier. The Postal Service did insist on cutting down the size of his route, mostly commercial addresses in University City. He retired in August 1988.

After retiring he didn't have to hunt for a hobby to eat up the clock. As they say, he kept on keepin' on. He savored wine, women, song, friends, children, food and sports and would take them each day in the order of their appearance.

He had a serious side. And he had a temper if he felt he was being walked over. On those rare occasions his brow would furrow and his voice would drop a couple of octaves. The words would come out slow, and in leaden tones from deep inside a barrel chest mounted on a 192-pound muscled body, the former amateur boxer focusing a controlled anger.

"He was no pushover. He would tell you if you went too far. He wasn't a very patient type of person. He didn't stand for a lot of foolishness. You knew," said his daughter. She said the local jitterbugs around his home near 52nd Street and Baltimore Avenue "didn't play no games with him. They didn't sit on his car or hang around his steps."

And once, when he didn't think his own letter carrier was doing quality work, it only took him one trip to the Post Office to upgrade standards. ''He'd usually have a problem only one time," Speach-Terry said.

But the Herbie Speach most people saw and loved was the guy who loved people. His daughter said "he was a toucher, a hugger and a kisser." He could tell jokes and listen attentively to another's and then shake out a long, hearty laugh. He was on everybody's party invitation A List.

When Herbie walked into a room women risked whiplash. There he was, resplendent in Neiman-Marcus sportcoat and slacks, gleaming cuff links, a tasteful gold medallion perfectly capping the vee of his opened shirt. His neatly trimmed mustache upraised on the ends by a wide smile. A Dewars scotch in one hand and a Benson & Hedges 100 in the other.

"He turned heads all the time. He was definitely a ladies' man. Women found him very attractive. He had it all together. He really had it," said his daughter. "My dad grieved hard when women would die and people wondered why." She said he loved and married two good women. She said that while it could be annoying for any wife when women pay a lot of attention to their husband, Speach-Terry said she believes they took a secret pride in it anyway. His first wife once commented that "there were no flies on him, no place."

"He was a gentleman. He knew how to handle himself. And he wasn't cheap," she said. "Everytime he did something, he did it top shelf. If the Grand Master (Masons) had a suite, he'd have one twice as big as the Grand Master. He only flew first-class and stayed at the best hotels at conventions." He even sent his blue jeans to the cleaners so they'd come back starched and creased.

Every grandchild made a beeline for Pop Pop's house because "he was a typical grandparent; no rules, no regulations, play as long as they want, watch TV, eat what they want, no bedtime, no nothing," said his daughter.

For a man who knew how to pack life into the hours and days, Herbie was very conscious of his birthday. It was an important event to be celebrated in a grand fashion. Who better to plan and direct it than Herbie? He had run a catering business on the side for 10 years until 1980. He learned the business while working part time at the Marriott on City Avenue years ago.

Herbie's birthday party was a much-anticipated social event. On his backyard patio was a wide variety of delicacies, the centerpiece being a roasted pig. Music was the oldies he loved: the Supremes, the Platters, Gladys Knight and the Pips. Some came who didn't even know him, but had heard stories.

He was 59 on Aug. 12, and celebrated it last Saturday. His daughter said he was still stirring the merriment when she wandered off at 2 a.m.

Usually at the end of any party he would make himself a large platter for breakfast. His family would always be a little amazed. He had the digestive juices of a shark.

Very quietly he used his catering skills to help friends. When someone he knew had a death in the family, he would appear at the home with a complete spread. This often included his secret-recipe barbecue sauce. He could also bake. After he died, his family found a very large stack of obituaries in his bureau drawer.

There was a history of heart trouble in his family. His doctor told him to stop drinking and to cut back on his lifestyle. He would stop, for a short time, then tell people, "You met me drinking and I'll be drinking when you leave me." She said she would have loved to have had her dad longer, but she understood. The candle that burns twice as bright, burns half as long. And Herbie Speach burned very brightly indeed.

The family knew what to do when Dad died. He said he wanted to be laid out in new clothes, new underwear, new socks, new everything. Tomorrow morning Herbie will be wearing a formal evening tux with tails and black tie. They took his shoes to his regular shoeshine man at 40th and Chestnut streets for a high gloss.

The rest of it Herbie took care of himself, as he said he would when he commented so many times over the years:

"When I die this world ain't gonna owe me nothin'."

He was a member of Mount Lebanon No. 9, Prince Hall Affiliate No.9, F&AM, the Shriners and the DeMolay Consistory. Originally from "The Bottom," at 39th and Aspen streets, he was a graduate of Benjamin Franklin High School and an Army veteran of the Korean War.

In addition to his daughter, he is survived by his wife, the former Wilhelmina Tucker; two sons, Herbert and Eric; a stepdaughter, Stacey Tucker; a stepson, Ned Tucker; a sister, Dorothy Clark; seven grandchildren; and his former wife, Helen Gay-Speach.

Services will be at 11 a.m. tomorrow at New Bethlehem Baptist Church, Aspen and Preston streets, where friends may call two hours before the service. Burial will be in Mount Lawn Cemetery, 84th Street and Hook Road, Sharon Hill, Delaware County.
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SARAH HANTON, MOTHER WITH 'MAGICAL' POWERS

Sarah Hanton, a woman of mystery and magic and God, died Saturday. She was 79 and lived in South Philadelphia.

When Mary Hanton Murray reflected on how the lives of her and her eight brothers and sisters turned out, she said her mother "had the power of magic."
A son, Philip Hanton, is filled with more awe now that he is grown and can appreciate the magnitude of it all: feeding, clothing and educating nine children on a construction worker's pay and guiding them into the fields of law, teaching, banking, arts, entertainment and social work.

"She gave us the Lord first. She made us understand who Jesus our Savior was. She instilled that into us and kept us moving when we were down. She did that with virtually no money," said Phil, a director with United Communities, who sang until recently with The New Image and now sings only in church.

He said she made each child feel special, treated each a little differently according to his or her needs and psyche. "That's the mystery of a mother," he said.

"Somewhere in there is a little secret for other women to raise families and virtually do it with nothing except with what you believe," Phil added.

She began telling her children from the time they were toddlers what they would be someday. She told Mary and Deborah they would be teachers and they are. She told son Melvin he was to be a lawyer. He finished law school and now works on Wall Street. She told Phil he would be an entertainer.

Mary Murray said that when the youngsters became adults, her mother presided over them "like the CEO of a large firm, overseeing each division of the company."

What was the secret to which Phil alluded? Where did this CEO train and obtain her "powers" to channel dreams and produce success?

It was not in any school. Sarah left school in the second grade. One of eight children, she went into the fields on the family farm in Elloree, S.C., to hoe a vegetable garden and pick cotton. When she reached young womanhood she married Thad Hanton. They became tenant farmers. Her first four children were born in a farmhouse. She would put her babies on the porch so she could hear them cry from the field.

It was one hot day when she watched her oldest son Thad plowing that she decided her children wouldn't spend their lives following a mule through the South Carolina dirt. She wanted them to follow a star, and she would lead the way. She and her husband came to Philadelphia, and he got a construction job. For a while she worked at the Campbell Soup Co. in Camden until the family got so large she had to stay home. In later years, when the older children left, she did domestic work.

Besides bringing her family and a dream from South Carolina, she also brought the best of an old way of life, including the best parts of a caste system that an individual could control. After God and family, a name was the most treasured possession.

The Hanton children would hear of those values a million times in many ways. She knew Scriptures for every situation. She instilled in them the pride of being bound by family ties, that nothing could penetrate the tightly circled Hanton wagons.

"We had a feeling of responsibility to the family," said Murray, who teaches social studies at Olney High School, "that we owed it to other brothers and sisters behind us to pull them along." And the younger ones were taught to mind the older siblings and emulate them. As adults, the Hantons remain close to one another.

The girls didn't need a lengthy tract on dating and morals. They had been raised to believe that they were Hantons and wore a good name. And once they lost their good name, they could never get it back.

Mother oversaw the homework, even though with her limited education, "she didn't know what we were doing and we knew we were beyond her," Murray said, ''but she gave us a sense of guilt, that we had to make our goals." None of the nine children ever wanted to disappoint Mom. There was none of the fudging or faking that kids are wont to do.

Melvin, the lawyer, said, "In that atmosphere there was no need to lie. She always made it so you told the truth." He said he, like others, had flashbacks within hours after his mother died. He recalled the nights she came in from the cold after cooking or cleaning in other homes to put food on her own table. Her husband died in 1973.

"She committed herself totally to her family. Mom gave it all," he said. ''Because she did, we are able to be what we are today."

Murray said, "The Lord was her inspiration and she was ours." She was also a counselor to countless neighbors during the 53 years she lived at 4th and Manton streets.

She said as each youngster graduated, money for gowns and yearbooks and activities "somehow magically appeared."

Mom grew up without television and never had much use for it later. The same with telephones. If someone tried to converse with her by phone she would repeatedly say, "When are you coming to visit?" People conversed face to face.

Mom went to bed early and got up early. She always cooked a breakfast hearty enough for field hands. She'd get annoyed if a youngster tried to rush out the door without eating and Mom would follow them to the door, pushing food into their mouths.

"You'd hear her voice in the morning," Murray said. "In the country, you hear birds. In the city, in my house, you heard my mother singing. Depending on the song, you knew what kind of day she had ahead. If it was a heavy spiritual, she had a hard day coming." Sometimes she and Phil would be in separate rooms and harmonize to a gospel record.

To the end, Mom wielded absolute power. Even as diabetes, high blood
pressure and a heart condition weakened her, she could raise her hand and silence a room. She monitored the lives of her children, and in later years the children would beg for one another not to tell Mom some things so as not to get her involved or upset.

Finally, she lost her ability to speak, but not the power to communicate or command. Murray said just before her mother passed, "she hugged me and patted me, to say, 'It's OK. It's OK.' She was actually trying to prepare me for the end. She was the strong one."

The Hantons obeyed her last order. They were prepared.

She was a member of Mother Bethel AME Church and its gospel chorus.

Survivors include three other sons, William Johnson, Thad Jr. and Irving; three other daughters, LuLu Mae Hanton, Virginia Hanton and Deborah Hanton Biscoe; 14 grandchildren; 12 great-grandchildren; and a sister, Marguerite Irick.

Services will be at 11 a.m. Friday at Mother Bethel AME Church, 6th and Lombard streets, where friends may call one hour before the service. Burial will be in Mount Zion Cemetery, Springfield Road and Bartram Avenue, Collingdale, Delaware County.
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CHRISTOPHER J. KELLY

Services will be tonight for Christopher J. Kelly, the uncrowned prince of his family, who was slain early Sunday by holdup men in an Overbrook Park tavern.

Every family of any size has one: the uncrowned prince or princess who does not seek special stature but achieves it nevertheless. It is not always the oldest, nor the best-looking nor the most successful. It is the one who is the crystal prism through which joy is filtered and magnified as it breaks into a colorful spectrum and defuses over the rest of the family.
Chris Kelly was the favorite uncle, the trusted brother, the loyal son. He would have shunned such descriptions.

A special person? Society today does not assign extraordinary attributes to a 35-year-old heavy- equipment mechanic who is living with his parents and whose possessions do not appear to much exceed a Miller Light and a pack of Marlboros on the bar before him, a union card in his pocket and a friend on either side.

But the son of U.S. District Court Judge James McGirr Kelly became exceptional by virtue of his plain and honest choices and the character which drove them.

Chris was intelligent. He was a 1975 graduate of Devon Prep. A family member said that whenever Chris was tested in school, he would blow the hatches off with his high scores. They said he was the smartest one of the kids. There was this problem, though. Chris, who loved reading Shakespeare and other classics and could converse on any topic, hated school. He took some history courses at Penn State University's Ogontz Campus before pulling the pin.

In some families, this might constitute failure. Not in the Kelly family. The Kellys have a school principal, a public relations person, a registered nurse, a lawyer, a federal employee and a student at the University of the Arts. Chris' choice to go into the trades was no less important or admirable in the Kelly family.

He completed a four-year journeyman carpenter program and then learned how to repair heavy equipment, such as forklifts. He was extremely proud of his Teamster Local 929 card. For the past five years he had been working at Procacci Brothers at the Food Distribution Center.

"He was a gentle, simple man with few possessions. His main possessions were his loyal friends and family. The number of friends he had was amazing," said Sharon Hake, one of his sisters, "I never saw him lose his temper in 35 years, never said an unkind thing about anyone in 35 years. He made everyone feel good, never put anyone down. We learned a lot from Chris. He had a real love of babies and children. Every other picture we have of him is holding a baby."

She said Chris' 12 nieces and nephews thought he was special. When they
went with him to the 7-Eleven, he bought them the place. "They thought they
went to heaven when they went with him," said Hake.

He had an apartment for a while, but decided to move back with his parents. For no other reason than because he loved them and they loved him. He loved all things Irish, and it seemed natural to go back home. In the old country, it was the custom for one of the sons to find himself by almost silent declaration to be the one to stay on the farm and keep it all going into the next generation. He was the son who was there to shovel the snow, drive an errand when traffic was bad or simply laugh and let linger the memories of a long-ago Kelly household.

"It helped all of us knowing he was there," said Hake. "They really understood each other beautifully and had real respect for each other. No one did it out of guilt, it was love. They certainly enjoyed each other's company. They cherished that relationship. They were friends." He liked to buy his father books and then start reading them before Dad could get to them. He could also do all the mechanical fix-ups.

"He did all the mechanical things, not me," said Judge Kelly, "I got rid of a car once because I could never get the hood open. I always wondered what people were looking at when they opened the hood. My wife's father was an engineer who could fix anything. She thought that's what husbands were able to do. I was saved by Chris. He was my helper. Chris was a joy every day. When he'd come home, he'd fill our home with happiness."

Hake said her brother loved Overbrook Farms. She would tease him that he didn't even want to visit her in Delaware because "he didn't like to go out of state. He was a real Philadelphian, an Overbrook Farms son. A neighborhood guy who liked it here."

He didn't date much. Never married, he was kind of shy, even though the well-featured and trim five-foot-seven man attracted the opposite sex. Over the years his sisters' friends would inquire about him.

He stayed in touch with friends from his days at Our Lady of Lourdes Elementary School through the present.

"Kel was always happy, happy-go-lucky," said John Costello, a pal since elementary school. "Anytime you were in trouble, Chris would stay right with you. He wouldn't leave you no matter what happened."

Another longtime friend was Paula Cabrey, who was in from California last weekend and visited him. She said one word described him - happy. "He was the easiest-going person you'd ever want to meet," she said. "He never complained, never. "

"He was happy with what he had." Cabrey said. "You could tell him the dumbest joke, one he had heard five times before, and he'd laugh like it was the funniest thing he ever heard."

Cabrey and two other friends were with Chris last Sunday morning at the Famous Bar and Grill on Haverford Avenue near City Avenue in Overbrook Park. They were at the bar finishing their drinks shortly after last call was sounded when three armed men entered through the back door. They were there to rob the bar and patrons.

Cabrey said she and Chris and the others were laughing and talking when one of the gunmen tapped Chris on the shoulder. Over the laughter and din of the people and jukebox, he apparently didn't hear the gunman's order to give up his money. The gunman shot Chris.

"Nobody knew he was shot," she said. "He sat a little bit and I said, 'Kelly, are you all right?' He shook his head and fell off the stool." Cabrey held him in her arms. She said he gasped a few times and then died.

His sister Sharon Hake said Chris used to wait for public transportation at 64th Street and Malvern Avenue. She said he would see the kids at the Overbrook School for the Blind and remark later to her, " 'The poor kids there, it isn't fair what they have to do. The challenge of every single day.' He felt lucky to have such good health." Chris was a religious man.

"Isn't fair" is noted in the Book of Ecclesiastes when The Preacher says, " . . . as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and the birds are caught in the snare; so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them . . . I have seen servants upon horses, and princes, walking as servants upon the earth."

Survivors include his parents, Jacqueline and James Kelly; three other sisters, Kathleen Staudt, Bridget and Tricia Anderko; two brothers, James Jr. and Brian, and 12 nieces and nephews.

Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated at 8 tonight at Our Lady of Lourdes Roman Catholic Church, 63rd Street and Lancaster Avenue, where friends may call two hours earlier. Burial will be in Calvary Cemetery.

Contributions may be made to the Overbrook School for the Blind, 6333 Malvern Ave., Philadelphia, Pa. 19151.
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CHARLES M. MYERS, 75, ROUGH & TUMBLE PHOTOG

Charles M. Myers, a retired award-winning photographer for the Philadelphia Daily News, died yesterday. He was 75 and lived in Trevose, Bucks County.

He worked for the Daily News for 32 years, retiring in 1979. He had been on the staff only a short time when he was assigned to cover a whistlestop visit to Philadelphia by President Harry S. Truman.
As Truman posed and waved from the train observation deck, photographers rushed to snap his photo. Charlie dropped his speed graphic camera, and it broke in pieces. Frantically he reassembled the camera. It should have been too late for a photo. But Truman saw what happened and, looking right at Charlie, held his hand aloft until the young photographer got his shot.

Getting the shot was what it was all about for Charlie and the people he worked for in those days of down-in-the-dirt pictures and knee-'em-in-the- groin stories - a brand of tabloid journalism that sold newspapers. Writers didn't meditate, and photographers didn't philosophize.

"He was one of those old-time press photographers who wasn't running around saying my camera is my brush and the film is my canvas. They had to get pictures in the paper. One of the things they had to do was really work quickly: compose, focus and bang off a shot. Charlie was one of these guys," said veteran Daily News reporter Frank Dougherty. "Those guys didn't talk about lighting and how they felt that day about the subject, and they didn't go out to the Art Museum and try to relate to Henri Cartier-Bresson."

Cartier-Bresson, a legendary French photographer from the 1930s to the 1950s, observed that photographers should strive to snap a picture at "the critical moment," that supposed split second when the photo would tell it all.

For Charlie and other photographers on the Daily News of the 1950s and 1960s, the "critical moment" came after they rushed back from an assignment and were standing in front of editor J. Ray Hunt's desk and he asked to see the pictures of the news they were sent out to cover.

The old Irishman wanted to see the wreck, not poetic shadows etched by a fading sunset. The older photographers also knew they could score a few extra points with the boss if one of the bystanders looking at the wreck happened to be a busty blonde in a short, tight skirt.

Like the other tabloid shooters of the day, Charlie always flew the red flag - no quarter given, or asked.

On a January night in 1950, Charlie stood outside the Delaware County Courthouse in Media waiting to photograph persons connected with a patricide trial. He got a good picture of Concetta D'Amore, the mother of Nicholas and John D'Amore, accused of killing their father, Benjamin P. D'Amore. Right after snapping the picture, Charlie was changing plates in his speed graphic when a man ran out of the crowd and attacked him.

"I want that picture," the man screamed. Charlie turned his body, and the man grabbed Charlie's arm and began twisting it. The camera was wrenched away and smashed, but Charlie protected the plate. The assailant escaped into the crowd, and Charlie was treated at the hospital.

Charlie did it all with one eye. As a kid, he was enraptured with baseball and hoped to maybe make it a career. But a ball hit him in the face, leaving him with only peripheral vision in one eye. A diabetic, he was forced to retire when he lost vision in the good eye. His wife of 45 years, the former Rose J. Geary, said, "He missed the business. He loved the job." It was Charlie who taught her photography, which led to her working for several years at Lux Studios doing portraits.

When World War II broke out, Charlie was declared 4-F because of his
vision. He went to work doing photography at the old Quartermaster Depot on Oregon Avenue. But as the war went on, he was reclassified and served in the Army Air Corps.

He was an avid ham radio operator (W3YFV) with more than 300 post cards on his wall at home from all over the world. His photos won numerous awards over the years. Daily News photographer Elwood P. "Smitty" Smith said, "He was a good photographer and a good man."

In addition to his wife, he is survived by a son, Charles M. Jr.; a daughter, Jacquelyn Swinton; two grandsons, Ronald Duffy and Paul Swinton; and a brother, Robert V.

There will be a private memorial service.

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