Charles Walter Pierce Jr.

Elsie May (Roper), was born on March 30, 1931, in Lowell, Massachusetts. He

died March 15 at his home in Boston from complications of emphysema.

Charles grew up in North Billerica, and graduated from Howe High School

(Billerica). He joined the Air Force and, after basic training in Texas, was stationed

at the Air Defense Command Headquarters in Colorado Springs for three years.

He then returned to Boston to be closer to his parents, and enrolled at Boston

University, majoring in English Literature with a minor in history. His B.A. cum

laude degree was awarded in 1958. After briefly working in the Toledo, Ohio,

Public Library, he was admitted to the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) School

of Library Science, and was awarded the Master of Arts in Library Science degree

in August, 1959. He served as the Acquisitions Librarian at the University of

Michigan General Library for two years and then as the Head of the Circulation

Department for a year in the UM Law Library.

In 1962 he was appointed Deputy Assistant Director at the Boston Public Library

in Copley Square. He served in this position until 1965, when he resigned to go

for a year of study and travel with his companion, William Vance, of Boston

University. Upon his return he was appointed Fine Arts Librarian at Boston

University and in 1970 became Head of the Reference Department at BU's Mugar

Memorial Library.

In 1976 he returned to Italy with Professor Vance and spent a year in Rome.

Increasingly thereafter he had to care for his aging and ailing parents, a filial

duty he fulfilled diligently and with great love. After their deaths in 1981

and 1987, he continued to travel extensively in Europe, the Middle East,

North Africa, Mexico, Canada, Brazil, and throughout the United States. To

sustain his professional identity and exercise his talents as a librarian, he

undertook occasional ad hoc projects in various Boston libraries, in

particular major special projects for the Boston Athenaeum, and work for

the library of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, and at Emerson

College.

Charles was a voracious reader of fiction and history. He also had a deep and

informed interest in music, theater, ballet, cinema, and the visual arts. He loved

to share his experiences with a wide circle of friends in Boston, New York, and

Italy, and he was loved for his courteous and genial presence, for his evident

enjoyment of life.

In 1999 he moved with William Vance to Rome, where they lived in an attico in

Trastevere for the next ten years, getting to know that city intimately but also

exploring most of Italy and making excursions to Cairo, Berlin, London, Paris, and

Morocco, and staying a few months at a time back in Boston and in Manhattan.

When Charles's health began to inhibit his mobility severely, he and William

settled back into their Beacon Street apartment, which they had originally

occupied in 1962 and bought as one of the first condominium units ever sold in

Boston, in 1971. Charles had a life-long love for the Back Bay, which after his

confinement to his home he continued to observe with pleasure from his kitchen

windows, never more so than during the beautiful blizzard on the eve of his

death.

Charles has no survivors other than his partner, William Vance. There are no services planned.