Dr. Charles Taylor Pace

1926 - 2024

Dr. Charles Taylor Pace

April 18, 1926 - December 12, 2024

Greenville, North Carolina - Dr Charles Taylor Pace, physician, Navy and Air Force veteran, educator, author and lifelong resident of Greenville N.C., peacefully departed this life on December 12, 2024 at the age of 98.

He was born in Greenville on April 18, 1926 to Lida Taylor Pace and Dr Karl Busbee Pace, a much-loved general practitioner who served the medical needs of Pitt County residents for half a century and co-founded the County's first hospital.

Although raised during the privations of the Great Depression, he nevertheless described his early years as a "perfect childhood." He was energetic, gregarious, popular, witty, and curious about all aspects of nature and mankind.

He was educated in Greenville's public schools and earned his Eagle Scout at age 14.

At age 16, he left high school during his junior year and enrolled at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Although preferring literature and history to science, he nevertheless took on an accelerated pre-med course of study. He joined Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity where, because of his youth and discipline, he was tagged with the nickname "Clean-Cut."

Immediately after he turned 18, with our country involved in World War II, he enlisted in the United States Navy as a seaman and was dispatched to Norfolk Va. He was honorably discharged following the end of the war.

He then returned to Chapel Hill to resume his undergraduate studies. After his junior year, he enrolled in the University's then two-year medical school. When his friends asked him why he was studying so hard, he replied: "If I don't pass my medical school exams, the professors might send me back to the 11th grade."

His final two years of medical school were completed at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. At the age of 23 he participated in, for the first time in his academic career, a formal graduation exercise.

He went on to complete residencies in Head and Neck Surgery at Virginia Commonwealth University and in Internal Medicine at Emory University.

At age 26, when our country became involved in the Korean War, he enlisted in the United States Air Force, where he was commissioned as a Captain, stationed at Ramsey Air Force Base (one of the sites for the Strategic Air Command) and served for two years as a Flight Surgeon.

Following his discharge from the Air Force, he returned to Greenville to join his father's general practice group. He provided to his patients a broad range of medical services ranging from baby delivery to surgery to geriatric care, ministering to them not only in his office or the hospital, but frequently through "house calls."

In 1957 he married Hubertha "Bartje" Boelman, a native of the Netherlands. They moved to Greensboro N.C., where he became the company doctor for the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad. It was there they started a family.

They then moved Charlottesville, Va., where he completed residencies in Psychiatry and Ophthalmology at the University of Virginia.

In 1965 he returned to Greenville and opened Pace Eye Clinic. For the next 45 years, he worked as a sole practitioner in ophthalmology and general medicine. He provided care to all in the community, regardless of their financial resources, sometimes accepting payment in farm produce or haircuts for his children. For many years he and his nurses reserved every Wednesday to the service those in the community who couldn't afford to pay anything at all. His home number was always listed in the telephone book, as he saw it as his professional duty to be available to all, no matter the hour, day or night. His medical colleagues knew him to be a superb diagnostician, an excellent surgeon and a compassionate counselor.

Always interested in learning and education, he founded Karl B. Pace Academy, a co-educational independent day school. During its first year, all three grades of elementary students took their instruction in the basement of the family home. Eventually he and other supporters of the school financed the construction of a five-building campus which educated boys and girls in the community from kindergarten through the 9th grade.

Despite the time limitations imposed by his medical practice, the school, and his family, he still managed to find time to read and write about history. On weekends, or during the early morning hours before patients arrived, he extensively researched and authored several books, including the recently published "Southern Independence: Why War?" and "Lincoln as He Really Was."

Like many of his generation, he believed his first duty was to follow Christian principles in service to God, his country, his community, and his family.

He viewed his profession first as a calling, and only secondarily as a living, abiding by the maxim of "living modestly, and not be seen as profiting from the suffering of others."

He was pre-deceased by his parents, older brother Dr Karl B. Pace, Jr and wife Nancy Derrickson Taylor Pace, and younger brother John T.W. Pace, Sr and wife Barbara Ray Pace.

He is survived by his wife Bartje Boelman Pace of Greenville; children C.D. Taylor Pace and wife Anne Gregory Pace, Peter J.B. Pace and wife Lisa Harrold Pace, Richard H.B. Pace, and Rebecca H.L. Pace, all of Raleigh; grandchildren Charles T.R. Pace and wife Anne L. Pace of Greensboro, Mary Frances Pace Allison and husband James Allison of Charlotte, C.D. Taylor Pace, Jr of Nashville, Tn., Virginia T. Pace of Raleigh, and Anneka M. Pace of New York, N.Y.; great grandchildren Peter, Emma and Sarah Pace of Greensboro and Hugh Allison of Charlotte; nephews John T.W. Pace, Jr and wife Mabel Pace of Raleigh, C. Christopher R. Pace of Raleigh, Karl B. Pace II and wife Gina Pace of Chatham County, and Aeisso W. Boelman and wife Paula Boelman of Scheveningen, the Netherlands; and niece Cariljn Boelman of the Hague, the Netherlands.

The family wish to express its gratitude to Mae Stancil for her 45 years of indispensable professional service as Head Nurse of Pace Eye Clinic, and the 20 years of private nursing and companionship she provided during the last chapter of his life.

And the family is indebted to the many friends and health care providers who so tirelessly and lovingly cared for him over the last several months.

He will be interred at Mount Pleasant Church in Greenville at a private burial service.

"Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees." Gen. Thom. J. Jackson