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City, McIntosh family recall a longtime public servant
By CHASE SQUIRES, Times Staff Writer DADE CITY -- In a moment shared by a city, friends and relatives of the late Charles McIntosh said goodbye to a man who was a soldier, a mayor and a father. More than 150 people packed Dade City's First United Methodist Church on Saturday for Mr. McIntosh's funeral. The man who went off to fight World War II, led graduate business programs at two universities and returned home to serve as mayor for a decade died Aug. 26. He was 84. Speakers recalled Mr. McIntosh's wisdom, faith and compassion. His family remembered his sense of fun and his appreciation for the simple pleasures of home life. An Army honor guard from Fort Stewart, Ga. -- complete with a rifle salute and taps -- honored his heroism during the second hour of the Normandy invasion during World War II and his 27-year Army career. "He was a man at peace with himself," friend Pete Brock said. "He loved the Lord. He loved his family. And he loved this community. He's going to be missed." "He was a great friend, a great municipal servant, a great statesman and a great friend of Dade City," Mayor Scott Black said. The church was filled with friends, city commissioners and those who worked with Mr. McIntosh at City Hall. Black read a message from state Department of Community Affairs Secretary Steve Seibert, who served with Mr. McIntosh on the Tampa Bay Planning Commission. "Never before have I met a finer, more honorable or wiser public servant," Seibert wrote. "I am a better person for having known and worked with him." After he retired as a colonel, Mr. McIntosh directed graduate business programs at Syracuse University and the University of South Florida. After he returned to Dade City, in 1985 he was appointed to the City Commission and he served until 2000, including five consecutive two-year terms as mayor. After stepping down to care for his ailing wife, Virginia, he remained active in his church and in championing a proposed senior center at the old Crescent Theatre in town. Mr. McIntosh's daughters, Susan Bruno and Anne McIntosh, shared a personal side of the man whom so many admired. At home, they said, he was a loving husband for 57 years and a caring father with the same quirks as any family man. "He loved to shop," Anne McIntosh said. "Especially grocery shopping. Mom would send him to the store for a loaf of bread and some milk; he would come out of the store an hour later with a shopping cart full of wonderful, fattening things." He was an avid golfer. He loved to camp. He loved clothes, his daughters said. "And he could grill the best steak in town," Bruno said. There were as many smiles as there were solemn moments as friends and family told stories about the man: the time he stretched six eggs to feed 30 with an old Army trick of using baking soda; the way he gamely joined a camping trip with his wife's family shortly after they were married; the way he could spin a story and leave everyone laughing. "When a person like Charles Anderson McIntosh goes to glory, we can only be envious," Brock said. "Let us take comfort that he walked among us as long as he did."
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From today's Pasco Times Editorial Letters |
