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Dr. Charles Browne Warden Jr. Veteran
February 07, 2021

Obituary

Dr. Charles Browne Warden, Jr., a member of the President’s Council of Economic advisors during the Johnson administration, a founder of Data Resources Inc., a Dean at the University of New Hampshire, and most recently a beloved teacher of economics at the Wilbraham and Monson Academy, passed away on Sunday, February 7th, in Springfield, MA. He was 90 years old – a milestone he was determined to reach, despite suffering the ravages of the covid-19 virus for almost two months. The first child of Charles Browne and Margaretta Weed Warden, Charlie Warden was born in Tenafly, NJ in 1931. His father was a bond salesman on Wall Street and his mother managed the Arthur Murray Dance Studio in Manhattan. As a child living through the depression in the then wild parts of New Jersey, Charlie developed a toughness and a passion for nature that remained with him throughout his life. At the age of 14, his father shipped him off by himself to work on ranch in Texas, and he spent his high school summers felling trees, claiming that he liked the biggest ones best because he could “ride them all the way down.” An excellent student, Charlie enrolled at Swarthmore College in 1948. He moved to Paris with his family in 1950 when his father took a post implementing the Marshall Plan for France on behalf of USAID, and studied for a year at the Sorbonne. He returned to graduate from Swarthmore with a degree in French in 1954. After graduation, Charlie joined the U.S. Navy. Upon completion of Officer Candidacy School, he was awarded a rank of Lieutenant JG, and was assigned to Military Intelligence. He spent his tour of duty in Japan, where at the age of only 24 he was named the head of the Navy’s Espionage, Sabotage, and Counter-Subversion Division for the Far East. After an honorable discharge from the Navy in 1958, Charlie began studying economics at Georgetown University. When the Joint Economic Committee at the White House asked local universities to each send a graduate student to work on the study, Georgetown nominated Charlie and George Washington University nominated a young Greek economist named Katherine Antigone Dolfis. The rest, as they say, is history. Soon Katherine was teaching economics at Johns Hopkins and Charlie was enrolled in a PhD program at Harvard university. They deepened their relationship for several years up and down Route 95, until they married and settled in Cambridge in 1963. On their first wedding anniversary they got lost driving in Western Mass. They ended up at the dead end of a dirt road, and began talking to the owner of a cabin there. They liked him, spent the day with him, found out it was for sale, and bought it. This cabin became Charlie’s favorite place on earth and it is still in the family. After graduating In 1964, Charlie took a job as a program officer at the Ford Foundation, but after 18 months he was recruited by his Harvard mentor Otto Eckstein to serve as Special Assistant to the Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors in the Johnson administration. When his term ended, he again joined Eckstein to found Data Resources, Inc. (DRI), a pioneering econometrics firm. After leaving DRI in the 1970s, Charlie pursued both teaching and consulting. He served as a Dean at the University of New Hampshire in the late 1970s, and in the early 1980s he helped establish the Stanton Group, a Boston consultancy specializing in energy development and policy. Ten years later, Charlie quietly traveled to North Korea to help lay the groundwork for what would ultimately become key to the Clinton administration’s Agreed Framework. Though this agreement ultimately fell apart, the these trips gave him a cache of stories he would tell for years. Charlie’s wife Katherine lost a long-running battle with breast cancer in 1994. A decade later, deciding not to mess with success, he married another Greek woman, Cleo Babacas, of Wilbraham, MA, in 2005. In Wilbraham he pursued what he called his “retirement years,” but which were actually spent teaching AP economics full-time at the Wilbraham and Monson Academy, a position that he held until the age of 87. Charles Warden was predeceased by his first wife, Katherine, his second wife, Cleo, and his youngest sister, Washington Post columnist Judy Mann. He is survived by his sister, Patricia W. Mitchell of Parrish, FL; his son Gregory Warden, daughter-in-law Anastasia Paskus Warden and their children Calder and Violet Warden, all of Ridgewood, NJ; and his daughter Staci Warden and her goldendoodle Schuyler, both of Washington DC. Memorial services will be held at Grise Funeral Home in Chicopee Ma on Thursday February 11th, with a viewing from 2:00 – 4:00 and a small ceremony at 3:30. Those that wish to make a contribution are encouraged to donate to their local covid-19 relief funds in Charlie’s name.

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Grisé Funeral Home
280 Springfield Street
Chicopee, MA 01013
413-594-4189