CHARLES
ASBURY FISHER, Class of 1910
July 3, 1885 - March 30, 1948
Inducted
into the
Indiana
Journalism Hall of Fame in1985
Seven students founded Sigma Delta Chi, later to become The Society
of Professional Journalists, at DePauw in 1909. Three of those
founders were Psi Phi Dekes, Charles Fisher, Eugene
Pulliam, and Gilbert
Clippinger.
Charles Fisher was born July 3, 1885, in Huntington, Indiana. After
graduating from Huntington High School, he came to DePauw where he
worked on the staff of the DePauw Daily, managed the baseball team and
served as assistant in the history department. He was a member of Delta
Kappa Epsilon fraternity, as was his son, Joe Fisher '35. His 1910
senior yearbook, in an apparent reversal of the facts, describes him as
"kinda consumptive and undersized." After graduation from
DePauw, he went on to earn a master's degree from Columbia University in
1917 and a doctorate from the University of Michigan in 1930.
His first job after graduating from DePauw was as a reporter for the
Kansas City Star. He then became a teacher of history at Lafayette High
School before becoming principal at Huntington High School in 1911,
principal of Warsaw High School in 1912, principal of Benton Harbor High
School in 1914 and, finally, principal of Kalamazoo (Michigan) High
School in 1919.
He was appointed assistant director of the University of Michigan
Extension Division in 1926, moving to the position of director of that
division in 1937. Fisher was a Mason, a member of the Methodist church
and a Kiwanian. He also held memberships in the National Education
Association for Adult Education and the American Sociological Society.
He held the office of president of the National University Extension
Association from 1944-1945. He was a 1947 delegate to the Jurisdictional
Conference of the Methodist Church, and he also served for four years on
the Ann Arbor, Michigan, Board of Education.
He died on March 30, 1948.
