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Charles Allen Taylor dies at 87: Retired professor of physics at Norfolk State University had a taste for adventure
(Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA) (KRT) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Aug. 1--As a teenager, Charles Allen Taylor did lawn work for a local school official to earn money for college.
When he learned that college financial aid might be available, he approached the school official about it. "She told him, 'I don't believe in blacks going to college,'" said his wife, Julia Gourdine Taylor.
"She jumped in her car and went to see his mother, who was a teacher. The lady said she would give my husband a nice apprenticeship as a mechanic. His mother was a polite and dignified woman. She heard the woman out. When Charles came home, his mother told him, 'You're going out of here to school!'"
Mr. Taylor, who retired as a professor of physics at Norfolk State University in 1991, will be remembered at a funeral Friday at 11 a.m. The service will be held at Mount Olive Baptist Church in Wicomico Church, where he was baptized as a youth. He will be buried across the street from the church in the Taylor family cemetery.
The 87-year-old Wicomico Church native died Monday in a Virginia Beach nursing home.
He completed his bachelor's degree in less than four years at Virginia State College, where he was a math and chemistry major. He served in the Navy as an electrician during World War II and returned to teach physics at VSC.
He took off a year to teach at Yaba Technical Institute in Nigeria.
"He was an adventurous person," his wife said. "He'd go with the missionaries out in the bush to see different tribes. On the way home from Africa, he toured Europe and took a course in London."
Mr. Taylor studied nuclear engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology. He passed exams for his doctorate at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute but didn't complete his dissertation. He took graduate courses at schools ranging from Yale University to the University of North Carolina.
He spent summers researching for the likes of IBM Corp. and Los Alamos Scientific Laboratories.
When he had time, he played the piano and accordion, attended operas, plays and concerts and was the man many women asked permission to dance with at recreation center dances, his wife said.
Central to all he did was his belief in Christ. A lifelong student and teacher of the Bible, he wrote out detailed lesson plans for the Sunday school class he taught for years at Princess Anne Plaza United Methodist Church in Virginia Beach just as he did for his college classes, his wife said.
Survivors, besides his wife, include a stepson, Edward R. Gourdine of Brooklyn, N.Y.; and a stepgrandson.
To see more of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.timesdispatch.com.
Copyright (c) 2008, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Va.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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