Charles Harold Poole Sr.

Rev. Charles Harold Poole, Sr., age 97, retired United Methodist pastor, passed away on Saturday, March 4, 2023, at his residence in Parc Provence in St. Louis, Missouri, much loved by his family and all who knew him, and loved by God who blessed him in all he did during his life on Earth.

Charles was born on August 6, 1925, in rural Giles County, Tennessee, the only child of Samuel Duncan and Bessie Robinson Poole. The following year, the family moved to Louisville, Kentucky where his father worked for the L&N Railroad. During the Great Depression, loss of that job opportunity meant that the Poole family would move back to Giles County, Tennessee, living in a log cabin on his grandparents’ farm.

It was there that Charles attended Brick Church Elementary School and that the family traveled by horse and buggy to Friendship Methodist Church on the Diana Circuit, a congregation that embraced him and whose love and guidance made a lifetime impression on him.

Charles later attended Beech Hill School, where as a sixth grader, he met Ruth Coggin who was a fifth grader. That same year, the school building burned, and their two grades moved into a single classroom in a local church. The following year, they returned to the new Beech Hill High School, where Charles excelled academically, played baseball and basketball and was elected student body president as he and Ruth became sweethearts. On weekends, he worked stocking shelves at the H.G. Hill Grocery Store in nearby Pulaski, Tennessee.

Upon graduation from high school, Charles (determined to pursue a college education), took his suitcase and $100 he had managed to save and rode a bus to Cookeville, Tennessee, where he went to the campus of Tennessee Tech University and told them he would like to enroll as a student. The dean of the college, impressed with his earnestness, helped him enroll and find lodging, and Charles took 18 hours of courses during that summer quarter including calculus, physics, world history and English literature. The fact that he made A’s in all of them, he said, was a tribute to the caliber of his teachers back at Beech Hill.

But when Charles turned 18 that fall, he was drafted in the Army during World War II. He completed infantry bootcamp and later qualified as a rifle sharpshooter and antitank gunman, jeep driver and prime mover driver. He served in the European Theater in France, Germany and Austria, then was deployed to the Philippines where he was staging for the invasion of Japan. While serving in Germany, the Army awarded Charles the Bronze Star for Valor. Following the unconditional surrender of the Axis Powers, he was discharged honorably on April 23, 1946, and he returned to Tennessee.

His romance with Ruth had continued during the war, and on a furlough, they were married on September 6, 1944. Upon his return, they both enrolled in Martin Methodist College in Pulaski, Tennessee, where they completed one year of classes. During Charles’s service in the Army and the experiences of war, he had decided that he must try to be a minister.

Charles visited with his District Superintendent H.T. Tipps in the Methodist Church about his desire to enter the ministry, and he received his license to preach from Pulaski First Methodist

Church, and was appointed to serve at Chestnut Grove Church. He preached his first sermon on October 6, 1946, while still a student at Martin Methodist College.

Charles went on to serve 15 appointments throughout the Tennessee Conference of the United Methodist Church before his retirement from full-time ministry in 1992. During his next appointment, the Hillsboro Circuit in the Nashville area, he was attending Peabody College and completed his bachelor’s degree. In his third appointment, Johnson-Bethlehem Charge, he enrolled in Vanderbilt Divinity School and also worked part-time as a gas station attendant.

As he served his next two appointments, first at Antioch-Thompson Chapel and later at Ardmore, Charles continued his course work at Vanderbilt. In 1942, he was ordained an elder in the Tennessee Conference, and received his Master in Divinity degree in 1954. For six months in Ardmore, Charles also taught high school when the school was without an advanced math instructor.

He was appointed to serve at Spring Hill in 1953 and while there, he began his work at Vanderbilt toward his PhD. The following year, he was appointed to Cedar Hill. While there, he completed his course work for his doctorate.

In 1957, Charles stepped out of the pulpit for three years as he was appointed to serve at Martin Methodist College as Dean of Students and Admissions. Then in 1960, he returned to pastoral appointments at Bellshire, Hillcrest and Donelson Heights.

He was appointed Cookeville District Superintendent in 1971 and served for six years. He returned to Nashville in 1977 with his appointment to Belle Meade United Methodist Church, then served his last and longest full-time ministerial appointment in 1980 to Goodlettsville at Connell Memorial.

Charles retired from full-time ministry in 1992, the same year Ruth retired from teaching, and they moved to their home in Nashville. But Charles began working immediately in a part-time capacity at McKendree United Methodist Church in downtown Nashville, a relationship he enjoyed for six years. Later, he would be appointed by the Bishop to several interim appointments in churches where pastors had health leaves – two in the Springfield area and one in the Franklin area.

Throughout his retirement, Charles continued serving on the United Methodist Tennessee Conference Committee on Older Adults, and he volunteered at the Conference Archives. In the years he was not employed elsewhere, he and Ruth attended Belle Meade United Methodist Church. He actively encouraged the church’s ministry to older adults, served communion to homebound members and tried never to miss a worship service, Sunday school class or fellowship gathering. He also enjoyed walking, tending his vegetable garden, reading, attending the Tennessee Annual Conference and cheering for the Vanderbilt Commodores. He and Ruth also traveled to Alaska and Hawaii, completing their goal of visiting all 50 states, and they also traveled some internationally.

Charles and Ruth were married 70 years, and they were a match made in heaven – because Ruth’s devotion, flexibility and masterful managerial skills enabled Charles to pursue the ministry he loved, and because in the later years of marriage, Charles’s commitment as her chief caregiver enabled Ruth to live out her life in the home she loved. Together, they raised a beautiful family – Charles, Jr. was born in 1948, Dian in 1949 and John in 1956, three children who learned about love and generosity from their parents. Together, they made home wherever Charles was appointed, learned how a family works together to live on a relatively small budget, to value education and appreciate the beauty of the world by camping on family vacations throughout the U.S. and parts of Canada.

About a year after Ruth’s death in 2014, Charles decided to relocate to St. Louis, Missouri, so he could be closer to son John and daughter Dian and have the benefit of his daughter-in-law Tania’s medical guidance. First, he lived in an independent living facility (Brookdale), then in an assisted care facility (The Sheridan) and, finally, a skilled nursing memory care facility (Parc Provence). In St. Louis, just a few blocks from his apartment, he found his local church, Mt. Zion United Methodist Church, a place where he could worship, attend his beloved Sunday School class and make new friends in Christ who visited with him right up until the day he died.

Never one to stay idle, Charles participated in a Bible study group at Brookdale and also volunteered at Rankin-Jordan, a facility for disabled youth where he prayed with patients and their families. At The Sheridan, Charles led prayer sessions for residents on the second floor who were in advanced stages of illness. At both these facilities, he suffered the great isolation that Covid brought in its separation from family and friends. At Parc Provence, Charles attended chapel services regularly and made it his personal ministry to lift other residents and staff up with a cheerful greeting, a radiant smile or a quick comeback that made them smile. Just a couple weeks before his death, he was crowned Valentine King of Parc Provence by staff who admired him.

Charles was first to count the blessings God had given him, and he was a blessing in the lives of many as well: Those who he invited to know Christ and to love God, those whom he baptized, those he joined in holy matrimony, those he visited, the families of all those whose funerals he performed, the many he guided into a closer relationship with God and whose lives of ministry he nurtured. Charles was known as a “builder,” leading congregations and individuals to envision their potential, inspiring their generosity and leadership, growing ministries and making a difference.

Charles was preceded in death by his parents, Sam and Bessie Poole; by his beloved wife Ruth; by his older son Charles, Jr.; and by his great-granddaughter Ashlynn Poole.

Surviving are his daughter, Dian Volkmer (David Lowenthal); son, John Poole (Tania Schmid); daughter-in-law, Trish Poole; three grandchildren, Sam Poole (Tracy Milligan), Krista Carpenedo (Mike), and Aaron Poole (Christa); and six great-grandchildren, Jay and Reese Poole, Emmy and Kaia Carpenedo, and Adeline and Avery Poole.

A memorial service celebrating Charles’s life will be held at 2 p.m., Saturday, April 22, 2023, with a family visitation preceding at 1 p.m., at Belle Meade United Methodist Church, 121 Davidson Road, Nashville, Tennessee 37205. Rev. Sam McGlothlin will officiate, and Rev. Dave McIntyre and Rev. Cathie Leimenstoll will deliver the homily. Memorial gifts may be made to Belle Meade UMC during the service or mailed to the church. Memorial gifts also may be made to the Poole Family Scholarship which Charles established at Martin Methodist College/Foundation, 443 W. Madison Street, Pulaski, Tennessee 38478.

Another memorial service was held in St. Louis on March 25.

Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.kriegshausermortuary.com for the Poole family.