Golden Owl Charles Rowe dies at 89

Charles S. Rowe, a National Press Club Golden Owl whose Club membership dated from 1953, died March 13 in Vero Beach, Fla., at the age of 89. He was editor and co-publisher of The Free Lance-Star (FLS) in Fredericksburg, Va., for 48 years before retiring in 1997. He had homes in Fredericksburg and Vero Beach.

Mr. Rowe was a former president of the Associated Press Managing Editors Association and vice chairman of the Associated Press. He served on the board of directors of the Virginia Press Association, the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association, the American Newspaper Publishers Association and the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

Honors included being in the Virginia Communications Hall of Fame and receiving the George Mason Award for service to journalism from the Society of Professional Journalists. He testified before committees in Congress on issues of press freedom, and his newspaper filed lawsuits demanding access to public information.

He joined the U.S. Navy in 1943 while a student at Washington and Lee University and served aboard a destroyer escort during the Battle of Okinawa and the occupation of Japan. He stayed in the Naval Reserve and retired as a captain in 1975.

After the war he returned to Washington and Lee University and was student body president and managing editor of the student newspaper. He graduated with honors and attended the university's law school until his father's death in 1949 when he and his brother Josiah assumed management of the FLS. He was a member of the university's board of trustees from 1984 to 1994.

Ed Jones, a retired FLS editor who had worked with Rowe, said "he had a fearless commitment to the highest ideals of journalism. Charles was utterly fair and unflinchingly courageous."

Rob Hedelt, who stayed with the newspaper after Rowe took him on as an intern nearly 40 years ago, said Rowe was not afraid to risk lawsuits for tough stories and reassured a young reporter sued for libel that "if we're doing our jobs right, this kind of thing is going to happen."