The Rev. Charles K. Riepe, former principal and president of the John Carroll School in Bel Air who had also been rector of the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Mary Our Queen, died in his sleep Saturday at his Bel Air home. He was 75.
Father Riepe was born in Baltimore and raised on Lake Avenue. He attended Gilman School and graduated in 1951 from the Cooperstown Academy in Cooperstown, N.Y.
A former Episcopalian who converted to Roman Catholicism, Father Riepe began his religious studies at St. Charles College in Catonsville.
He earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy and a master's degree in theology from the Pontifical University of Innsbruck, Austria, where he was ordained in 1960.
He published two books, Living the Christian Seasons and The Mass of the Roman Rite, originally written by the Rev. Joseph Jungmann and revised by Father Riepe in 1958, on the 100th anniversary of the Pontifical University of Innsbruck.
After returning to Baltimore, Father Riepe served as associate pastor at St. Gregory the Great Roman Catholic Church in 1960, and the next year became associate at St. Joseph Roman Catholic Church in Fullerton.
In 1964, he was named the first chaplain and first religion department chairman at the John Carroll School in Bel Air. He also coached the junior varsity baseball team for six years until becoming the school's second principal in 1968.
He also directed the development of the football program at the private school and oversaw its transition in 1971 to an independent high school under the umbrella of the Archdiocese of Baltimore and a board of trustees, of which he was the first president.
In 1974, he left the school when he became rector of the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen, returning to John Carroll as president in 1976.
In a dispute over the direction of the school, Father Riepe asked that he not be renominated as president, and he left in 1978.
He returned to the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen, where he was rector for two years until being named headmaster of St. Sebastian School in Needham, Mass., in 1980.
After leaving St. Sebastian in 1990, Father Riepe was Roman Catholic chaplain at the Johns Hopkins University from 1990 until retiring in 2002.
Father Riepe had served on the board of John Carroll from 1993 to 1996, and in 2002 returned to the school as chaplain.
When Father Riepe celebrated his 75th birthday in December, Paul Barker, current John Carroll principal, described him as a "titanic figure."
