Charles Andrew Elmore

Charles Andrew Elmore, age 62, died on Thursday, Oct. 30, 2025, at his home in Wellington, Florida, less than three months after diagnosis with metastatic colon cancer. He was a devoted husband, father, brother, uncle, friend, journalist, and sports fan. 

Charles was born on September 13, 1963, in Titusville, Florida, 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. 

As his father pursued advanced degrees and a career in higher education and law, Charles spent his childhood in several southern locales, including Nashville, Tennessee; Cleveland, Mississippi; Birmingham, AL; and his most cherished place of all, the beloved family cabin on Brier Creek near Sylvania, GA. 

Charles and Jay spent their most formative years as “faculty kids” on the campus of Hampden Sydney College in Farmville, Virginia, where their father was an English professor. One of his teachers began calling him “Chas,” and it became the only name that many of his loved ones ever called him. Charles graduated from Prince Edward County High School, where he was editor in chief of the school newspaper and a three-sport athlete (football, basketball, tennis) in 1981. 

Charles attended the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, on a full academic scholarship. He majored in English, joined the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity, embraced intramural sports, and wrote for the student newspaper, The Sewanee Purple. During his college summers, he completed reporting internships with The Washington Times and The Atlanta Constitution. He served as editor-in-chief of the Purple during his senior year. He graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with special honors in English in 1985. 

If there are natural-born journalists, Charles surely was one. He was a true believer in freedom of the press, journalistic integrity, and the centrality of both for a democratic society. His parents told stories of how he had relished non-fiction writing assignments in elementary school. At age 10, he convinced 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. 

True to form, Charles accepted a position as a business reporter for The Palm Beach Post in 1986, then moved to Atlanta, GA, to accept a position with The Atlanta Constitution in 1987. He had met his future wife, Jenifer Lynn Bobo, at Sewanee in 1985. They married on May 6, 1988, after Jenifer had been awarded a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, which allowed them to travel the world together for the first year of their marriage. During that magical year, Charles continued to work as a foreign freelance reporter for American publications while Jenifer researched the teaching profession in Sweden, England, and Japan. 

Upon returning the U.S. in 1989, Charles returned to The Palm Beach Post, where he spent the remainder of his full-time career until his retirement in 2019. He wrote news, features, and columns for multiple beats and sections: business, sports (especially football and tennis), the business of sports, investigations, and local and state government. From 1996-1999 his family relocated to Tallahassee so that he could report on state government from the Post’s state capital bureau, where he became bureau chief in 1998.

 Charles returned to Palm Beach County in 1999 to return to the sports section. His sports writing highlights included Superbowl XLI in Miami and multiple Grand Slam tennis tournaments—the U.S Open, the French Open, and Wimbledon. He took special pride in his “Postcards from Paris” feature, which was a hit with South Florida tennis fans and prompted some of his most flattering feedback from readers. 

Charles retired in 2019 after working 32 years for Cox Enterprises, the parent company of the Post and the Constitution. During that time he won numerous awards for business, sports, and investigative writing, including a National Headliner Award in 2003, a Best of Cox Award in 2001, and multiple first-place awards in annual competitions held by the Florida Press Club and the Society of Professional Journalists. After retiring from full-time journalism, Charles continued to report on a freelance basis for local newspapers, particularly the Town-Crier and Coastal Star.

 Awards notwithstanding, his proudest achievements were his loving, 37-year marriage to Jenifer and the raising of their three wonderful children. Charles and Jenifer bought their house in Wellington in 1999 when daughters Holly and Shelby were 7 and 5, respectively. The family joined St. David’s Episcopal Church and became active with the Outreach and Sunday School ministries. Charles was gratified to see both Holly and Shelby excel in writing, and he took great pride in coaching Shelby’s soccer teams for many seasons in the Wellington Recreation youth soccer program. Completing his joy was the birth of son Andrew in 2004. All three children are graduates of Dreyfoos School of the Arts in West Palm Beach. 

Charles 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. He was still sending weekly college football analysis and predictions to his uncle Ed in Tuscaloosa and sports-loving friends less than a week before he died.

He is survived by his wife, Jenifer B. Elmore, a Professor of English at Palm Beach Atlantic University; daughter Martha Hollingsworth (Holly) Elmore, 34, of San Francisco, CA, who holds a Ph.D. in Biology from Harvard University and is the founder and executive director of the organization PauseAI US; daughter Shelby Elizabeth Elmore, 31, of Stuart, FL, a graduate of Florida State University and a Registered Nurse practicing in Palm Beach Gardens; and Andrew John Elmore, 21, a senior at his parents’ alma mater, the University of the South in Sewanee, TN.

He was preceded in death by his mother Mary Wallace Wacker in 1997 and his fatherAlbert Elmore in 2016.

Other survivors include his brother John Edward Elmore, sister-in-law Abby Moore Elmore, nieces Elzie and Emma Elmore, and nephew Jed Elmore, all of Atlanta, GA; his uncles Edward Hollingsworth of Tuscaloosa, AL, and John Hollingsworth of Hendersonville, TN; aunts Lillie Gresham of Athens, GA, and Panzey Maxwell of Franklin, TN, and their children and grandchildren; his father-in-law Charles E. Bobo of Shelbyville, TN, and the rest of his wife Jenifer’s large extended family, all of whom live in middle Tennessee; and his best friend, Ronnie Green of Falls Church, VA, a journalist with ProPublica and the eulogist for Charles’s funeral service.

The funeral service will be held on Tuesday, Nov. 4, at St. David’s Episcopal Church in Wellington. Visitation will be from 5:30-6:30 p.m. with the service beginning at 6:30 and a reception immediately following in the Parish Hall. There will be a second visitation on Saturday, Nov. 8, from 11 a.m. to noon, at Thompson-Strickland-Waters Funeral Home in Sylvania, GA, followed by a burial service at Screven County Memorial Cemetery.

Donations in honor of Charles Elmore 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