Chalender Hall Lesher (1885-1967)

From the Huntingdon Daily Times, August 1967.

  Huntingdon, Pennsylvania has been served in its two-century-plus history by two unusually named mayors, and the first of those men, Chalender Hall Lesher, is profiled today. A man of many hats in this Pennsylvania borough, Lesher was at various times a newspaper publisher, banker, president of the Juniata College board of trustees, president of the Huntingdon Throwing Mills, a Democratic national committeeman, and for four years served as Burgess (mayor) of Huntingdon. Born near Selinsgrove, Snyder County, Pennsylvania on May 19, 1885, Chalender Hall Lesher was the son of Joseph and Mary Ellen (App) Lesher.

  Lesher removed to Selinsgrove with his family at age two, and his early education was obtained there. He would go on to graduate from  Susquehanna University in 1904 and at an early age learned the printing trade in the office of his father. Upon Joseph Lesher's purchase of the Huntingdon Monitor newspaper in 1910, Chalender Lesher joined his father in Huntingdon, and would reside here for the remainder of his life. Father and son would operate J.C. Lesher & Son and  published not only the aforementioned paper but also "conducted a commercial printing establishment." 

  In October 1915 Chalender Lesher wed Maude Logan Simpson (1886-1957). The couple's four-decade marriage produced one son, Chalender Lee Lesher (1917-1943), a student at both the Juniata College and the Carnegie Institute of Technology. An assistant operations officer with the 323rd bomb group, 456th Bomb Squadron during WWII, Lesher would lose his life during a November 1943 bombing raid on a Nazi airfield in Amsterdam, and in the year following his death was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart and Silver Star for his service.

  In the years following his resettlement in Huntingdon Lesher built up a reputation as a leading area businessman, and after leaving the Monitor in 1944 made headway into a number of other areas, including time as president and director of the Mifflinburg-based Huntingdon Throwing Mills, a silk manufacturing business. In 1935 Lesher took office as a director and treasurer of the Huntingdon County Thrift Corporation, an organization that he continued to be affiliated with into the early 1960s. 1940 saw Lesher named as a director of the Grange Trust Company (serving until 1952) and held additional banking interests with his time as a director of the First Grange National Bank and the Penn Central National Bank, holding office until his death in 1967.

From the Huntingdon Daily Times, May 23, 1960.

  Early in his Huntingdon residency Lesher became active in local Masonic circles, and by 1930 held memberships in the Standing Stone  Chapter No. 201 of the Royal Arch Masons and the Mt. Moriah Lodge No. 300 of Free and Accepted Masons. A former president of the Huntingdon Rotary Club, Lesher held additional memberships in the Patriotic Order Sons of America (P.O.S. of A), the Knights Templar, and the Odd Fellows Lodge.

  For many years active in Huntingdon County Democratic circles, Lesher served as chairman of the Huntingdon County Democratic committee and was also a member of the Democratic National Committee for an indeterminate period. Elected as Burgess of Huntingdon in 1941, Lesher served from 1942-46 and during his term was a member of the War Price and Rationing Board for Huntingdon. Lesher was succeeded as Burgess in January 1946 by another oddly named man, Loyal Dayne Daubenspeck, whose mayoralty extended sixteen years.

  Following his term, Lesher was elected to the board of trustees of Juniata College in 1947, where he would serve until his death. He was named as president of that board for the 1961 year, and beginning in 1953 was a trustee for the J.C. Blair Hospital in Huntingdon. Widowed in 1957, Lesher remarried to Beulah Kensinger Repogle (1913-2013), who was nearly thirty years his junior. The couple was wed until Lesher's death at the J.C. Blair Hospital on August 4, 1967, aged 82. After funeral arrangements, Lesher was interred at the Riverside Cemetery in Huntingdon and was survived by his wife Buelah, who died three months following her 100th birthday in November 2013.

From the Lock Haven Express, August 8, 1967.