Tobacco.org

• Charlie Althafer, 77, used jokes to fight smoking 

When someone asked to smoke at his home, he'd hand them a wooden ashtray shaped like a coffin with a sticker: "Please don't smoke. You might croak." He also had a cigarette lighter that, when flicked, unleashed a horrific, hacking cough.

Friends and family say such antics were vintage Althafer, a health educator who oversaw anti-smoking campaigns in a decades-long career with the Centers for Disease Control.

Charles "Charlie" Althafer, 77, of Tucker, died Feb. 9 of heart failure at his home in Tucker. A memorial service will be 1 p.m. Saturday at Living Grace Lutheran Church in Tucker. Wages & Sons Funeral Home in Stone Mountain is in charge of arrangements.

In the 1960s, Mr. Althafer was acting director for a project of the National Clearinghouse for Smoking and Health that researched smoking and its consequences in San Diego. He joined the CDC in the mid-1970s as deputy director of a federal anti-smoking program . . .

Charlie was one of the pioneers who just kept working at it, saying it was something we had to change. He was involved not only in the usual anti-smoking programs, but in developing surgeon general reports that came out on smoking. You can see the results now of his work in this country."

And then there were the jokes. Mr. Althafer, who had been a radar specialist with the Marines during the Korean War, had one for any occasion.

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