He was an active masters athlete and held the M75 world record in the shot put, set at his home track at UCSB, for over a decade.
Cheadle became UCSB's second chancellor at a time when local leaders in Santa Barbara, California had already been fighting tenaciously for several decades to establish a research university in their community.
Cheadle gave them what they had desired for so long: the transformation of UCSB from a small liberal arts college into a research university.
However, Cheadle was severely traumatized by the turmoil of the anti-Vietnam War era of the late 1960s, when Governor Ronald Reagan declared martial law and deployed heavily armed California National Guard troops to the UCSB campus.
As a result, Cheadle became so passive for the remainder of his chancellorship that from 1972 to 1977, real power on campus lay in the hands of Vice Chancellor Alec Alexander.