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Community mourns loss of veterans advocate Chuck Craig

The Daily Record - 2/28/2019

WOOSTER — Known for his dedication, passion and willingness to lend a hand wherever he could, Charles “Chuck” Craig left a deep void in the lives of his family and in the community when he passed away on Sunday.

Having served in the U.S. Army from 1952 to 1954, Craig was widely known as an advocate for veterans and he was involved in numerous veterans organizations. Craig himself was inducted into the Ohio Veterans Hall of Fame in 2007.

here is really hard to bear,” said his wife of 16 years, Judithe. “He was an extraordinary man. He made the lives of everyone he met, better. He knew no strangers and people felt free to approach him.”

Judithe said that even during his stay in a nursing home, he was helping others. “During his time at the (nursing home), there was a young woman there in distress with some personal problems,” she recalled. “She told me later that ‘your husband saved me.’ And that was toward the very end of his life — he was still helping others.

“He is irreplaceable, things will not be the same for me and they won’t be the same for the community,” his wife added. “I will try to live everyday of the life that remains of me to honor the life that he lived.”

Many local people say Craig was selfless and giving to others and to the community.

“He helped with a lot of different projects,” said Wooster resident Greg Long, who worked with Craig on military projects and memorials. “He was great, he was a resource that I always turned to. Anyone in the county that was doing any type of veterans project could count on him.”

Long also worked with Craig as a member of the Boy Scouts organization. “He was quite a guy, he has done so much over the past 40 years,” he said.

Nelson Weirick, director of the Wayne County Veterans Service Commission, started working with Craig in 1999.

“My earliest recollection of him was as a kid,” Weirick said. “I remember waking up to a radio alarm clock to get ready for school and he was an announcer at WWST. I heard him every morning, but I didn’t know him then.”

Weirick joined the U.S. Navy and returned to the area in 1999. “That is when I first met him and got to know him,” he said about Craig. “As I started getting involved with veteran activities. As it turned out, he was the (Wayne County Veterans Service Commission) board president and he interviewed and hired me.”

Weirick continued to work closely with Craig over the years, “I never met anyone that was as dedicated to veterans as him. You couldn’t stop him, he never missed an opportunity to help.”

Craig’s legacy also will live on through his work in radio and television. He started in radio as a student at Wooster High School and eventually became a radio broadcaster with radio stations WWST Wooster, WHBC Canton, WJW Cleveland, WCKY Cincinnati, WNCO Ashland and WTAE Pittsburgh.

Craig Walton, general manager of WQKT Wooster, said that “his voice was just amazing, in the old days of radio, there was a lot more live broadcasts and he (Craig) did it all. He planned his whole shift, it was more hectic when it was live.”

With the Radio Production Company of Hardman and Associates in Pittsburgh, Craig became one of the featured actors in the horror film classic “Night of the Living Dead” playing, among other parts, a newscaster. He traveled to fan club functions and had a worldwide following.

“He had a great singing and speaking voice,” said Todd Patterson, director of the Wooster High School Drama Club. “He was charismatic and he would draw people in through his storytelling ability.”

While his presence will be missed, Judithe gets comfort from a saying her husband would tell her, “ ‘As long as I am with you, you will always be safe in the arms of love.’ I always felt safe with him and I don’t think I will feel that way without him,” she said.

Reporter Dan Starcher can be reached at 330-287-1626 or dstarcher@the-daily-record.com. He is on Facebook at www.facebook.com/?WoosterWriter and Twitter at www.twitter.com/?danstarcher.

CREDIT: DAN STARCHER