Charles N. "Chuck" Meole was a four-year letterman for the Millersville varsity football and baseball teams and also competed for the then-unsanctioned school wrestling club.
Meole not only was active on the gridiron, diamond and mat, but also in student organizations during his Millersville undergraduate days. He was the vice president of the Pennsylvania Teachers College Student Government Association and president of the Millersville State Teachers College Student Government Association in his senior year (1939-40). He also served as president of the Normal Literary Society and help membership in the Mathematics and Varsity Clubs plus the Industrial Arts Society.
In addition, he was president of Iota Lambda Sigma fraternity as a senior and was a four- year member of the MSTC Theatre Ars Club (director in 1939-40).
After graduation from Millersville, Meole served as an industrial arts teacher, a U.S. Army Air Corps instructor and an air traffic control director.
In 1982, at the age of 66, Meole took up weightlifting as a competitive sport, and has become of the nation's most honored masters division athletes.
He has won the gold medal at the U.S. National Masters Championships every year since 1985--a current string of 13 consecutive titles. He earned six gold medals in the International World Masters Championships.
Meole was a three-time gold medalist in both the Pan American Masters and American Weightlifting Assn. championship tournaments, and he was captured top honors in his adopted home state of Louisiana 12 times since 1984.
Amazingly, Chuck has continued to excel despite undergoing cardiac bypass surgery in 1991. At 82, he is still going strong.
Meole has earned induction into the Louisiana Senior Olympic Sports Hall of Fame (1993) and the U.S. Masters Weightlifting Hall of Fame (1997) and was featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not in 1997.
He holds membership in the Civitan International civic club and the Knights of Columbus, and is a member of Alhambra International where he assists mentally challenged people.
The word "retired" is not in Chuck's lexicon. He remains active as a sales representative and stockholder for the Coburn Supply Company, a wholesale plumbing, heating and air conditioning firm, in his hometown of Baton Rouge, La.
