Charles “Chuck” Warden Jr. ’41

Cornell Life Trustee Charles “Chuck” Warden Jr. ’41 died Dec. 26, 2019. He was 102.

Warden worked at a Chicago bank whose owner persuaded him to attend Cornell College. Upon graduating he was astonished to learn that the banker had canceled the remainder of Warden’s college debt. He married Ruth “Gussie” Ohlsen ’41 in 1941 and became an Air Corps flight instructor. Later he was sent to Germany as a fighter pilot. He served in the Air Force Reserves, retiring as a major.

After receiving his law degree from the University of Iowa, Warden drove his family to Boulder, Colorado, and began Warden and Company Realty. He was a Republican county chairman for years, filled in for the local municipal judge, and was active in the Jaycees and downtown business organizations.

Warden was appointed head of Colorado’s Federal Housing Authority by President Eisenhower, but left that position at the end of the Eisenhower administration to become senior vice president of Western Federal Savings in Denver. He was a Cornell trustee from 1971 to 1986 and afterward served as a Life Trustee. He received Cornell’s Distinguished Achievement Award in 1975.

World travel became a passion for the Wardens, who at retirement began intricately planned trips across Europe and China. In 2011 Cornell’s King Chapel benefited from Warden’s lead gift for an elevator built into its stone walls, given in honor of his wife, who died in 2004.

Warden is survived by daughter Barbara Warden McKee ’66 and her husband.