Charles Randol Mead

1933 – 2016

Charles Mead passed away at home on July 11 in Houston, Texas, with his family by his side. Born in 1933 to Randol and Jessie Mead in Caruthersville, Missouri, Charles is survived by his wife of sixty years, Gracie, his five children, Charlotte, Janis, Tracy, Robert and David, nine grandchildren, eight great-grandchildren and the St. Louis Cardinals. As a boy growing up during WWII, Charles collected news clippings, studied battle maps, built model airplanes and dreamed of one day flying a P-51 Mustang fighter — a dream that came true on his 75th birthday over the skies of Florida, thanks to friends and family. It was a peaceful mission that sunny day in which no enemy aircraft were encountered or destroyed. In 1950, after graduating from Caruthersville High with a diploma, a busted leg and some passing yards, Charles enrolled at Memphis State. After a short college stint, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and split time between Ft. Riley, Kansas and Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri, where he played football, learned how to salute and dig a foxhole – a skill that served him well in digging postholes in his backyard and building sandcastles on the beach. After proudly serving his time in the military, Charles married Gracie in Memphis, Tennessee and enrolled at the University of Missouri in Columbia, where he received his Bachelor degree from the School of Journalism. In 1959, a Mizzou grad with two small children to feed, Charles took a job with John Deere Magazine in Moline, Illinois (declared by Charles as the coldest, most uninviting place in the U.S.) There, he was handed a pencil and a camera and told he was both the writer and the photographer for the magazine. After touring the countryside, interviewing and photographing farmers and learning everything he ever needed to know about soybeans, Charles shoveled the snow from his driveway one last time and drove the family south to Jackson, Mississippi to write copy for an advertising agency. In 1969, still unsatisfied with the climate, Charles moved his family (having grown in size with four children) further south to even hotter temperatures, and planted himself firmly in the sweltering clime of Houston, Texas. Not content with a near-manageable litter of four, Charles and Gracie finally added one more child and a dog. In 1973, after four years of writing ad copy for Goodwin Dannenbaum Littman & Wingfield, Charles joined forces with Bob Aylin to form Aylin-Mead Advertising, later becoming Aylin Mead & Stewart. In 1990, he teamed with Terry McCoy to open the world headquarters of Hawkeye Communications. Twenty-five years later, in 2015, he officially retired his pencil and his Beltway 8 toll pass.

As successful as he was in the advertising world, Charles was an even more accomplished husband and father. And it was at home where he won most of his distinguished honors. He was a loving and devoted husband to Gracie for sixty years. He was proud of his children and they were equally proud of him. He was a protector, a provider, a mentor and a coach – a coach not only to his kids but to countless other Houston-area ballplayers through the years. He remembered kids’ names decades after releasing them into the wild, along with their positions and jersey numbers and whether they had the ability to successfully lay down a bunt or throw a block. The quintessential family man, Charles told the stories, provided the wit, spurred the laughter, kept the score and fed the animals when everyone else forgot. He drove his family to the beach, provided the shade and kept an eye out for the jellyfish. As he did at work he did at home. He wrote the book.

A memorial service will be at 1:00 pm on Monday, July 18, 2016 in the Sanctuary at Second Baptist Church, 6400 Woodway Drive, Houston, TX with a reception to follow in the Deacons Parlor.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.