Darling Bequeaths $2.2M to YSU for Faculty Chair
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – The late Charles Darling, a retired history professor at Youngstown State University and host of WYSU’s “Folk Festival” show, has left a $2.2 million gift to establish an endowed faculty position at the university.
“Professor Darling left an indelible imprint on YSU and the entire Mahoning Valley,” said YSU President Jim Tressel. “We thank him for remembering his alma mater in his estate. His legacy will live forever through this faculty position.”
The Charles Darling Distinguished Faculty Chair in American Social History at YSU will be a full-time professor position in the Department of History in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences.
The gift is part of YSU’s $100 million We See Tomorrow fundraising campaign. Increasing the number of endowed faculty positions is among the priorities in the campaign. The Darling Chair is YSU’s 11th such position, joining recently announced positions in gerontology, economics, actuarial science and English.
Darling died in July 2018 at the age of 86. A native of Massachucetts, he was graduated from Youngstown College in 1953. He served in the Army as a medical technician and then went on to earn a master’s degree in history from Ohio University. He returned to Youngstown in 1958 to join the history faculty at Youngstown College, retiring in 1998.
His well-known folk program on WYSU celebrated its 48th season in 2018. Darling wrote two science fiction novels, “Gamma Connection” and “End Games,” as well as two books on American folk music, “The New American Songster” and “Messages of Dissent: Struggle songs in American history.”
He was a president of the Youngstown Torch Club, which he joined in the early 1970s. In 2009, he received the Internal Association of Torch Clubs’ Paxton Award for his paper, “The origins of American involvement in Vietnam.”
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