WELLINGTON — Charles Andrew Elmore, a reporter at the Palm Beach Post for 30-plus years and more recently a freelancer for The Coastal Star, died Oct. 30 at his home in Wellington, less than three months after diagnosis with metastatic colon cancer. He was 62.
He was a devoted husband, father, brother, uncle, friend, journalist and sports fan.
Mr. Elmore was born on Sept. 13, 1963, in Titusville, where his parents — Mary Wallace Hollingsworth of Sylvania, Georgia, and Albert Earl Elmore of Forest, Mississippi — had been recruited to teach school during the “space boom.” His only sibling, John “Jay” Edward Elmore, was born in 1967.
He spent his childhood in several Southern locales, including Nashville, Tennessee; Cleveland, Mississippi; Birmingham, Alabama; and his most cherished place of all, the beloved family cabin on Brier Creek near Sylvania. He graduated in 1981 from Prince Edward County High School in Farmville, Virginia, where he was editor-in-chief of the school newspaper and a three-sport athlete — in football, basketball and tennis.
Mr. Elmore graduated magna cum laude from the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, where he majored in English. He served as editor-in-chief of The Sewanee Purple his senior year of college. During his college summers, he interned at The Washington Times and The Atlanta Constitution.
If there are natural-born journalists, Mr. Elmore surely was one. He was a true believer in freedom of the press, journalistic integrity, and the centrality of both for a democratic society. At age 10, he persuaded his teacher to let him start a newsletter, The Fifth-Grade Times, which prominently featured his editorial columns expressing disappointment and dismay over President Nixon and the Watergate scandal.
Mr. Elmore became a business reporter for The Palm Beach Post in 1986, accepted a position with The Atlanta Constitution in 1987, and, after marrying Jenifer Lynn Bobo in 1988, he worked for a year as a foreign freelance reporter while the couple traveled the world during his wife’s Thomas J. Watson Fellowship.
Mr. Elmore returned to The Palm Beach Post in 1989 and worked for the paper until his retirement in 2019. He wrote news and feature stories for multiple beats and sections. He served for a time as the Post’s Tallahassee bureau chief; covered multiple Grand Slam tennis tournaments including Wimbledon, the U.S. Open and the French Open; and handled special investigations along with his business and government news coverage.
More recently, he reported on a freelance basis for the Town-Crier in Wellington and The Coastal Star.
He received numerous awards for his coverage, including a National Headliner Award in 2003, a Best of Cox Award in 2001 from the Post’s then parent company, and multiple first-place awards in annual competitions — including one in January from the Florida Press Club for his 2024 Coastal Star piece on predatory parking rates in downtown Delray Beach private lots.
He loved history, true crime narratives, detective fiction, stoic philosophy, rock and blues music, stand-up comedy, the many Jack Russell terriers that he and Jenifer adopted, and, of course, sports. He was a passionate, lifelong fan of the Alabama Crimson Tide football team and the University of Virginia Cavaliers men’s basketball team.
Besides his wife and brother, Mr. Elmore is survived by daughters Martha Hollingsworth “Holly” Elmore of San Francisco and Shelby Elizabeth Elmore of Stuart; son Andrew John Elmore of Wellington; and many extended family members.
He was preceded in death by his mother in 1997 and his father in 2016.
A funeral service was held Nov. 4 at St. David’s Episcopal Church in Wellington, with burial Nov. 8 at Screven County Memorial Cemetery in Georgia.
Donations in Mr. Elmore’s honor may be made to Journalism Funding Partners, a nonprofit dedicated to increasing the depth, diversity and sustainability of local journalism, at www.jfp-local.org.
— Submitted by the family
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