Charles Ernest Edgar, Jr. ’28, a Mobile businessman and civic leader who was the Mobile Rotary Club’s 2003 Rotarian of the Year, died August 1, 2007. He was 100 years old. Born two weeks after the hurricane of 1906 blew through town, he lived through a century of Gulf Coast changes.
After being a student in Mobile’s public schools through seventh grade, he transferred to University Military School and graduated in 1924, later becoming one of the 15 original members of the school’s board of trustees. He attended Davidson for two years, returning to Mobile to work in a prospering business, Coca-Cola. He eventually worked his way up to the position of treasurer.
Edgar and his lifelong buddy, Augustine “Gus” Meaher Jr., spent many an afternoon after school, Edgar said, heading out to Belle Camp, the Bellingraths’ property prior to its opening as Bellingrath Gardens, to hunt and fish. They hunted together every Saturday until Meaher’s death in 2001.
A former member of the Mobile Junior Chamber of Commerce and the board of the Bellingrath-Morse Foundation, Edgar’s sense of Bellingrath history was treasured by many.
He was preceded in death by his first and second wives, Amelia Lyon Moore, then Mary Leila Williams. Survivors include his two sons, Maj. Gen. Ernest Edgar III of Auburn and Walter Bellingrath Edgar ’65, 1731 Hollywood Dr., Columbia, S.C .29205; a daughter, Serena Edgar Willcox of Mobile; five grandchildren and six great-grandchildren, including Elizabeth Rean Edgar ’96.