Charles Rosenbury Erdman III

Charles Rosenbury Erdman III, 94, died peacefully, surrounded by members of his family, on July 20, 2018, at his residence at Eskaton Retirement Community in Sacramento, Calif.

Charlie was born Sept. 7, 1923, in Princeton, N.J., where his father was a professor at Princeton University and mayor of the city. Charlie graduated from Princeton in 1946 after serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, when he saw combat in Gen. Omar Bradley’s Ninth Army in France, Holland and Germany.

The family maintained a summer residence in Edgartown on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, where Charlie met and married Joyce Ann West in 1949, who had been born and raised there.

They soon started their family and moved to East Dorset, Vt., where they built and ran a motel for many years in the southern Green Mountains, where Charlie imbued his whole family with his passion for skiing and the idyllic country life.

Upon retirement, he and Joyce moved to Stowe and began spending winters in Lake Tahoe, Calif., and summers back at their beloved Edgartown, and enjoyed many extended visits at both places with their children and grandchildren.

Charlie also became part of the Eskaton Retirement Community, where he spent 18 years, making many new friends in this closing chapter of his life.

Family was always the center of Charlie’s life, as was a good party, and he maintained a large circle of friends throughout his life. His good humor, generosity, boundless energy and can-do attitude affected everyone around him and brought out the best in people. He was a larger-than-life figure who his children will always cherish.

His wife of 65 years, Joyce West Erdman, died earlier, as did his brother Harold.

Survivors include his five children, Cully, Dick, Lucy, Sarah Lowis and Calvin Erdman; and three brothers, Peter, David and Michael.

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