page_title: Charles Bemies
section_title: Family and later years
hierarchical_section_title: Charles Bemies / Family and later years
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of Madeleine Suzanne Bemies, wife of Charles Bemies
context_page_description: Charles Otis Bemies was an American football, basketball, and baseball coach and Presbyterian minister. He became acquainted with James Naismith while studying at Springfield College in the late 1880s. While serving as the athletic director at Geneva College, he organized the first college basketball team in 1892. He graduated from the Western Theological Seminary and was ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1897. From 1899 to 1901, he served as the first basketball and second football coach at Michigan Agricultural College. After retiring from coaching, Bemies served for many years as a Presbyterian minister and evangelist in rural Pennsylvania. He was also active with YMCA, serving with that organization in Russia in 1918 and in South Dakota in the early 1920s. Bemies lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota in his later years and died there in 1948. He was posthumously inducted into the Beaver County Hall of Fame in 1992.
context_section_description: Bemies was married to Lina Stracke (born 1863 in Iowa) in May 1891.  They had two sons, Carl Louis Bemies (1892–1966) and Clifton S. Bemies (born May 1899).  At the time of the 1900 United States Census, Bemies was living with his wife and sons in Meridian, Michigan, near East Lansing.
  At the time of the 1910 United States Census, Bemies was living with his wife, Lina, and two sons in German Township, Fayette County, Pennsylvania.  Bemies' first wife, Lina, died in 1913.
  In May 1918, Bemies met Madeleine Suzanne Lévy while in France.  Madeleine was born in France in 1895, and they were married in France in October 1918.  At the time of the 1920 United States Census, Bemies was living in Brookings, South Dakota with Madeleine and his two sons from his first marriage.
  At the time of the 1930 United States Census, Bemies was living with his wife, Madeleine, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and his occupation was recorded as Presbyterian minister.
  Bemies died in August 1948 after a short illness at the Minneapolis General Hospital in Hennepin County, Minnesota.
  Bemies was posthumously inducted into the Beaver County Hall of Fame in 1992.
caption: Bemies' second wife, Madeleine, in 1920.
exif: {}