Editor’s note: Each Sunday, The Herald-Mail runs “A Life Remembered.” Each story in this continuing series takes a look back — through the eyes of family, friends, co-workers and others — at a member of the community who died recently. Today’s “A Life Remembered” is about Charlotte Walsh, who died March 19 at the age of 89. Walsh’s obituary was published online in The Herald-Mail on March 22.
Health care provider, political mover and shaker, zany entertainer, world traveler and a supporter of the arts and education.
Charlotte Clair Campbell Walsh was all of those during her life in Washington County.
Working 30 years as an occupational health nurse at the former Mack Trucks plant, Charlotte got her educational start in West Pittston, Pa., where she was born in 1932.
She graduated from West Pittston High School in 1950 and later completed her registered nurse training at the Pittston Hospital School of Nursing. Pittston is in northeast Pennsylvania, near Wilkes-Barre.
She married Verdine E. “Dean” Campbell, setting off an adventurous life that her kids still marvel over today.
International travel
Dean was a civil engineer and in 1961, his job took him halfway around the world to Indonesia.
The country was preparing for the Asian Games — similar to the Olympics — and Dean’s company was helping to build highways and bridges in preparation for the event.
The couple’s daughter Cindy Campbell, a nurse anesthetist at Meritus Medical Center, still remembers the no-nonsense way her mother made the trip with Cindy’s two other siblings. Once there, Charlotte didn’t waste time taking care of business, such as lining up vaccinations for the kids. Then she marched into a shoe store and told the clerk she needed shoes for the youngsters for the 1 1/2 years the family would be there.
It was a memorable trip that family members still talk about. During the road construction projects, various heads of state in Indonesia visited workers, including Achmed Sukano, president of the country, they said
Charlotte and Dean had sold their house in York, Pa., and after the Indonesia trip, they moved to Hagerstown where Dean had landed civil engineering job.
Then it was off on international travel again around 1966, this time to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil for similar work for Dean.
Except Cindy remembers it as a particularly tricky time for her mother and the kids.
Since they arrived during the Rio Carnival, considered the biggest carnival in the world, the only place Charlotte could find for her family was an apartment that bordered on being run down, she said.
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There were no American schools for the kids to attend, so they ended up in a private school and learned to speak Portuguese.
The couple’s son, Tim, president and CEO of Callas Contractors, remembered the excitement of it all. Big outings were always being planned for the family, like a driver who took them through the Rio area and over mountainous regions, he said.
“She was just really adventurous like that. She was always tackling something,” Cindy said.
To further illustrate the point, the couple decided to end the trip with a cruise from Rio to New York City, then home to Hagerstown.
“Back then, cruise boats were pretty crude,” Tim said.
The couple’s third son, Terry, is a retired doctor living in Zanesville, Ohio.
Cindy remembers that just about anything would happen during the family’s international travels, like when they had a pet monkey named “Mr. Gibbs” in Indonesia.
“I mean, who does that?” she asked.
Charlotte picked up a lot of art, such as sculptures and paintings, during her travels and she eventually became a member of the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts and the Washington County Arts Council.
‘It was go, go, go’
Back in Hagerstown, life might have been different, but it didn’t go any slower for the couple.
Cindy said her mom was forever getting her involved in things, whether it was Girl Scouts, majorette groups or music and dance lessons. And they boys “played every sport” there was, she said.
“It was go, go, go. Sign up for this, sign up for that,” Cindy said.
Charlotte and Dean joined an Exchange Club in town, which would host a regular event called “Mad Caps” that involved members putting on skits at the North Hagerstown High School auditorium. A director was always brought in from New York to help organize it, and there were all sorts of acts, such as comedy routines.
“My mom was in every skit,” Cindy said.
Pat Nixon visit
Charlotte was active in the local Republican Party and worked on a number of campaigns, including one of President Richard Nixon’s campaigns. Nixon’s wife, Pat, came to the couple’s house once for a luncheon.
Cindy and Tim remembered their mother having stacks and stacks of Republican voter files around the house, and contacting voters in advance of elections to talk to them about races and help them if they needed anything, like rides to polls.
“She spent days and days on the phone,” Tim said.
Charlotte’s perseverance was put to the test in 1975, when Dean died of pancreatic cancer at age 45.
She had the nursing job at Mack Trucks at that time, and because the couple valued the importance of higher education for their kids, Charlotte set out to pay for it on her own. She worked extra on holidays and weekends to pay for their college, making that the priority before continuing her nursing education through St. Joseph’s University, North Windham, Maine, in the 1980s.
She met her second husband, Andrew J. Walsh II, at Mack Trucks. He was an avid golfer and Charlotte learned the sport too as they traveled around the country on golfing vacations. He died in 2008.
As an occupational health nurse at Mack Trucks, Charlotte was responsible for health screenings for workers and running the plant dispensary. If there was a medical emergency at the plant, Charlotte would get on her “little emergency vehicle” to rush to the patient and stabilize the worker until medics arrived, Cindy and Tim said.
Taking care of people was important to Charlotte, like when she headed up a parish health council at her long-time church, First Christian Church of Hagerstown on Potomac Avenue. She offered health screenings to church members, consulted with them about health issues and would even go to members’ homes to help care for them if needed.
She also volunteered at Hospice of Washington County, which Cindy believes she was partly inspired to do since her husbands died of cancer.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Brazil and Indonesia were among the travels in Charlotte Walsh’s life