Charles Thomas Alexander, professor emeritus at Medill and former director of the Medill News Service, died Nov. 15, 2019. He was 91. Alexander was born in Minneapolis on Sept. 21, 1928, but his family home was in Mount Vernon, Ind. After receiving his bachelor’s degree from Duke University, 1950, he served in the military during the Korean War and studied for two years at the Boston University School of Theology. He obtained his master’s degree in journalism from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and began his journalism career with the Washington Star in 1956 as an assistant city editor. He then became managing editor of Delaware’s Wilmington Morning News and Evening Journal in 1961, and then an editor and publisher of the Dayton Journal Herald in Ohio. He returned to Washington, D.C. in 1975 to serve as a professor of journalism and director of the Medill News Service. He retired in 1994.
He loved sports, music, theater, travel and the church, and served as an elder of the Georgetown Presbyterian Church for over 30 years.
A long-time Alexandria resident, he is survived by his wife of 68 years, Elizabeth; his daughters Elizabeth and Lucy; and grandchildren Charlie and Emma.