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Biographies for Lee County, Florida
A Biography of Charles Edgar Foster
Submitted by Norita Shepherd Moss
mossnb1 at earthlink.net
Lee loses keeper of its history
Alva's Charles Edgar Foster, 91, died Sunday
By AMY BENNETT WILLIAMS
Published by Ft. Myers Newspress.com on March 8, 2005
How do you measure a legacy like the Old River Rat's? How do you even describe it?
That's what educators Cindy Bear and Rick Tully were pondering Monday morning, and that's likely what many in Southwest
Florida's environmental community wondered when they learned of Charles Edgar Foster's death on Sunday.
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The Alva native was so many things in his 91 years: proud Cracker, soldier, Ivy league
graduate, writer, artist, historian, husband, friend, that it's impossible to categorize him, friends say. Above
all, he was a teacher, both by vocation and avocation.
Whether he was hammering together an aviary for injured birds at the Calusa Nature Center and Planetarium, leading
a field trip to Cayo Costa, guiding an oxbow cruise along the Caloosahatchee or sipping a beer on his oak-shaded
porch, Foster taught anyone listening. It may be trite to say the outdoors was his classroom, but in Foster's case,
it was true. He knew the woods and waterways of this once-wild frontier as well as he knew its history. He could
tell you the species of moss creeping up over the crumbled foundation of an old riverfront home, and he could tell
you who had lived there, what kind of whiskey they favored and where their family had come from back in the 1800s.
(He was magic, too, he could talk squirrels down out of trees and set squalling babies to giggling with just a
few words in their respective languages.)
Foster's roots here were deep; he was a Hendry and a Blount, and he never tired of uncovering facts about the region's
past.
"He was probably one of the last pioneers," said friend and biologist John Cassani. "I can't think
of anyone else who could lay anywhere close to that claim. His entire life was this place and he spanned the entire
spectrum of its culture -- he was just a good old boy who happened to have a master's and be a historian."
Foster wrote two histories: one of the Calusa Nature Center and Planetarium, which he helped found, and the other,
"The Benevolent Dane," a biography of the red-headed, wild-bearded, hard-drinking sea captain who founded
Alva.
Certainly he was qualified. Born in Fort Myers (a fact he jokingly downplayed) Foster attended Lee County schools,
then went the University of Florida. He graduated with a degree in education in 1939, the same year he got married
and started teaching business education in Baldwin, Florida. He served in the U.S. Army from 1942 to 1944. Following
the war, the Alva boy traveled to New York City to put some Ivy League polish on his pioneer upbringing, receiving
a master’s degree in education from Columbia University. After returning to Fort Myers, he was a classroom teacher
and instructional materials supervisor for the Lee County School District until he retired in 1975. Then he became
an almost full-time volunteer for the Calusa Nature Center, his church, Redeemer Lutheran in Fort Myers and the
Alva Museum, which he helped found. "He really saw the place change from a remote backwater to the metropolis
it is," said Tully.
It could be easy to forget, as Foster reminisced in his sing-songy, stuffy-nosed tenor, that this was a high-powered
intellect. Not that he ever seemed naive or slow; it's just that he was so genuinely folksy, so plain-spoken, he
tended to sound like a feed-store philosopher when, in fact, he was a true scholar of Southwest Florida's natural
history.
A scholar and a lover. There was no mistaking it, the way he'd shade his eyes with one hand as he steered his skiff
with the other, a slow grin spreading over his face as he'd cut the motor and glide into the green glass water
of an old oxbow. It was that love that kept him equally engrossed in the present and the future, especially as
it related to his beloved river, alongside which he'd spent his youth. He helped form the Caloosahatchee River
Citizens Association in the late 1980s and with his friend, aquatic biologist Rae Ann Wessel, he led tours of its
scenic oxbows. Foster took it upon himself to show almost every newcomer who crossed his path his Florida. He'd
load them up in "Miss Muggins," a little outboard, and buzz them out to Pine Island Sound or up to Lake
Okeechobee.
"I think he took every single young person who came to the nature center out in "Muggins" to introduce
them to this place, and to show them just what they were there to teach about and protect," said Susan Brookman,
a friend and former nature center director.
Though Foster's wife, Margaret ("the love of his life," said Wessel), died in 1996, Foster talked about
her often until the end of his own life.
When Foster fell and broke his neck in 2000, he shocked everyone by battling back to upright mobility. Wary of
such a thing happening again, however, he accepted the invitation of Brookman and her husband, Steve, to come live
in their Caloosahatchee riverfront cottage. "They must have added at least five years to his life right there,"
Cassani said. "He could get up every morning and look at the river -- his river."
He gave his last "class" on his river in January, leading a slow boat ride through its oxbows to teach
their importance to a crowd of students ranging in age from 2 to roughly 70. Just a month later, though, he was
in so much pain from cancer (he'd had it for years, a fact he hardly mentioned) and arterial blockage that he went
to Hope Hospice in Lehigh Acres.
When his friends came to his bedside, he blessed them, held their hands, ate the chocolate they brought, and gave
thanks. "Even as he lay in the hospice, he was saying prayers, and they were all prayers of gratitude,"
said Brookman. "If you held his hand the final days, he would pull it up to his mouth and kiss it and say,
'Bless you.' That’s the quintessential --never, ever focused on what he lost and always grateful for what he had."
As always, he was affectionate, curious and a teacher to the end, said Bear.
"One of the things I'd learned from Charles the whole time I knew him was about the value of venturing out,
venturing afield," she said. "And those of us who were fortunate to be with him at the end, he taught
us about venturing afield for the last time."
Name: Charles Edgar Foster Born: Nov. 15, 1913 Died: March
6, 2005
Details: Born in Fort Myers, raised in Alva. He earned a bachelor’s degree in education from the University of
Florida in 1939, the same year he married Margaret Melzer and started teaching business education in Baldwin, Florida.
He served in the U.S. Army from 1942 to 1944. In 1950 he received a master’s degree in education from Columbia
University. After returning to Fort Myers, he was a classroom teacher and instructional materials supervisor for
the Lee County School District until his retirement in 1975. He was active in numerous environmental and philanthropic
groups, including the Calusa Nature Center and Planetarium, the Audubon Society and the Caloosahatchee River Citizens
Association. He was a member of Orient Lodge #590 (PA) F&AM and a charter member of Redeemer Lutheran Church
in Fort Myers.
Foster was preceded in death by his wife Margaret. He is survived by a sister-in-law, Betty Jane Foster of Pensacola,
a niece Loretta Foster Durman of Chesapeake, Va., and many other relatives and friends. In lieu of flowers, memorial
donations may be made to Hope Hospice or the Southwest Florida Community Foundation, where scholarship funds will
be established in memory of Charles and Margaret Foster.
Services will be held at Redeemer Lutheran Church at 3:30 p.m. Thursday, March 10. |
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