Gary L. Knepp
Charles Magee Adams of Milford was a well-known journalist and a compulsive chronicler of small-town America. Adams was the editor of Milford’s Valley Enterprise newspaper. He earned a national reputation as a freelance writer, publishing more than 100 articles for such publications as The Saturday Evening Post, Reader’s Digest, and Atlantic Monthly. In 1927 he became the nation’s first radio critic for the Cincinnati Enquirer.
Remarkably, he accomplished all of this despite being blind.
Adams was born on July 30, 1893. He lost his eyesight in a gun accident at age 12. After graduating from Milford High School as the valedictorian of his 1912 class, he attended The Ohio State University. Adams graduated Phi Beta Kappa in three years with a degree in journalism.
Magee became an excellent typist who, according to his Enquirer editor John Caldwell, always had “clean copy”. Caldwell recalled that Adams “was a strong, demanding critic who wouldn’t take any lower standards from anyone.” His columns were often sharp. A local radio station got him fired in 1945. He was rehired, staying with the paper until 1978 when he retired because there was nothing on the radio but disc jockeys.
Adams was a familiar figure around town. He was often seen chopping wood, his favorite exercise, at his Center Street home. Magee never missed a Village Council meeting; impeccably dressed in a snappy three-piece suit and a fedora. He never left home without his pipe.
He navigated the byways of Milford unaided, walking with his cane and counting the number of cracks in the sidewalk. He knew the number of cracks to every destination in his mental map.
Between 1968 and 1981 Thelma Sellers, a self-described “avid collector of local lore”, began recording her conversations with Adams about old Milford. She transcribed the hours and hours of their talks with the intention of publishing them in a book entitled “Milford Remembered”.
Magee stated the book’s purpose in its foreword:
“This modest book makes no pretense of being a deliberate history of Milford…It is simply a response to the eternal question ” What was it like to live back then?”
Just before she passed away, Thel gave me the tapes and transcriptions in the hopes that they would be published some day. Thirteen of “Magee’s Memories” appear in my book Musings from the Land of the Clear Mountain. One of my favorites, called “Outdoor Facilities”, follows:
“Cecil Demille, notwithstanding, the revolution wrought by the bathroom did not change everything overnight. A goodly number of families also retained their facilities in full Sears catalogue readiness without words it was simply understood that some things were better left to the great outdoors.”
Magee Adams died in 1981 at age 88. He is buried with his wife Delia in Milford’s Greenlawn Cemetery.