May 31, 2023 (San Diego) – A memorial service has been scheduled for renowned author and radio host Charles Harrington Elster, who died March 1, 2023 of cancer at his home in Kensington. The memorial will be held on Saturday, July 15 at 2 p.m. at the Kensington Community Church, 4773 Marlborough Drive, San Diego.

Best known as the original co-host of  “A Way With Words” on KPBS from 1998 to 2004, Elster was a passionate logophile, or lover of words. The show’s founding cohost, Richard Lederer, remembers Elster as “a real communicator with a great voice.”

Elster also authored a dozen books on pronunciation, vocabulary and style, starting with There is No Zoo in Zoology and Is There a Cow in Moscow?” He penned high school vocabulary-building novels Tooth and Nail: A Novel Approach to the SAT and Test of Time: A Novel Approach to the SAT and ACT.  His last book, How to Tell Fate from Destiny and Other Skillful Word Distinctions, came out in 2018.