Koiner, Charles

29 Apr Koiner, Charles

1920 – January 19, 2019

Mr. Koiner was a Fair Pioneer and volunteer time in the Farm and Garden Building.

Born in 1920, Charlie graduated in 1939 from Richard Montgomery High School in Rockville, the county seat. He grew up across Old Georgetown Road from another farm family; their daughter would become his wife. The Koiners sold their farm in 1959 to developers who erected a discount chain department store, E.J. Korvette. The property would later become Mid-Pike Plaza and today’s “new urbanist” Pike & Rose.

Charlie continued living in Montrose, managing the estates of the landed gentry, on land that would become today’s haute-culture Strathmore music hall, and residing on land next to the mansion occupied by Sargent Shriver’s family. The Kennedys visited the place, lending an air of glamour in its last pre-suburban days.

Meanwhile, Charlie’s maternal grandfather had built a small cottage in Silver Spring in the 1930s, and Charlie, his wife and daughter moved there in 1979. He eventually bought adjoining plots that belonged to other family members, assembling the one-acre farm that survives him.