Charles Brunswick

Charles Brunswick, whose careers included working in the crime laboratory for the Youngstown Police Department and as a photographer for WFMJ-TV, died Sunday from complications following surgery. He was 92.

He was the first person ever certified to conduct polygraph examinations for the Youngstown Police Department and was part of a crew in the crime lab that modernized forensic science and crime scene investigations.

As an award winning photographer and videographer at WFMJ-TV, he spanned the conversion from film to tape news gathering and editing. As a photographer for the city, he documented visits to Youngstown by John F. Kennedy during his Presidential campaign and of controversial Presidential candidate and segregationist George Wallace and the resulting protests. As a TV photographer he interviewed celebrities as varied as Ohio State football coach Woody Hayes and Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling.

He was born Feb. 11, 1925 in Youngstown and graduated from what was then Scienceville High School in 1943. He enlisted in the U.S. Army in June of 1943, serving in the China Burma India Theater. He was honorably discharged in April 1946.

In July of that year, he married his high school sweetheart, Bette Cramer, and they remained married until her death in 1996.  He joined the Youngstown Police Department in 1950, patrolling the south and west sides before joining the crime lab in 1966, where he worked until his retirement in 1977.  He worked part-time for the television station while with the police department and then became a full-time photographer with the station until his retirement.

In 1997, he married Betty Jean Badyna and they remained married until his death while in hospice care at Park Center Health Care and Rehabilitation in Boardman. Besides his wife, he is survived by a son, Mark (Judy) Brunswick, of Minneapolis; step-children, Debra (Corey)Grindle of Toledo, Dianna (Robert) Oatridge of Cortland, and Terrence (Jean) Badyna of Leesburg, FL; a brother, David, of Boardman; and a grandson, Peter, of Minneapolis.  He is preceded in death by his parents, Charles and Dorothea Brunswick, his first wife, Bette, and a son, Charles, who died in 2013.

Funeral services will be held Thursday at 11AM at the Davis-Becker Funeral Home, 8536 Market St., Boardman. Interment will follow at Lake Park Cemetery.

Friends and family will be received Wednesday from 4-7PM and Thursday from 10-10:45AM at the funeral home.

The family requests donations to be made to Crossroads Hospice, 3743 Boettler Oaks Dr. E., Uniontown, OH 44685 or Angels for Animals, 4750 W. South Range Rd., Canfield, OH 44406.

Condolences may be sent at www.beckerobits.com.