BARTOW, Fla. – Arland R. Meade, 103, died at home in Floral Lakes Senior Community, Bartow, Fla., April 16, 2019. Born Oct. 23, 1915, the second of six children of Charles and Louise (Additon) Meade on a dairy farm in Greene, Maine.
Arland graduated magna cum laude from the University of Maine in 1938 and received Masters degrees from the University of Wisconsin in 1947 and Fairfield University in 1977. He served as a cryptographer in the Army Air Corps during WWII and married Beth Ann Schroder in 1945, beginning a 66-year-love-and-ballroom-dancing partnership until her demise from pneumonia in 2011.
World traveler, lifelong chronicler and professional journalist, Arland held U.S. and abroad publications positions in government, private industry, and academic institutions, retiring as Professor Emeritus of Journalism from the University of Connecticut in 1986. He was an inveterate student and proponent of the international language Esperanto. He to the end remained sharp of mind, quick of wit, and interested in everything and everyone.
Arland has published an autobiography, a book of over 100 letters to the editor published by several newspapers, and a history of his academic fraternity Phi Kappa Phi. He has during the latest 25 years won over 200 medals in the Polk Senior Games, the latest golds earned about a month before his demise.
Arland since early adulthood and in several states of residence had been an active member of Unitarian Universalist congregations.
He is survived by his “kid” brother Russell, 92; Beth’s brother James Schroder, 92; sons Thomas and Charles, retired attorneys; daughter Melody Meade, an International School Principal; her young adult children Natalia and Jason Goldstein; son-in-law Peter Goldstein; daughter-in-law Brigid Arcand; and numerous nephews and nieces.
Whidden McLean Funeral Home in Bartow will send Arland’s ashes for interment in the ancestral plot at Gracelawn Cemetery, Auburn, Maine, where a memorial celebration of his eventful and caring life will be planned for this summer.
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