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.
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