dwco5051
Commander
- Joined
- Sep 14, 2008
- Messages
- 2,452
Another great one passes on. No, I am not referring to the Captain of “The Captain and Tennille” but I mean Charles “Charlie” Sullivan. Who the heck was Charlie you may ask. I will be attending Charlie’s services tomorrow to bid his soul good by. He led as full a life as anyone I have ever met and I was proud to call him my friend. Just a few pieces of his life; At age 19 he left college and joined the Navy and served in the Pacific as an electricians mate first class on a destroyer escort that played a part in seven campaigns and was hit by a kamikaze with much loss of life and damage to the ship. After the war he returned to college and with help from the GI Bill graduated with a degree in electrical engineering. He was married to the same woman for 69 years. After 40 years of working in business he retired to pursue another of his passions, aviation. He became an aircraft broker buying and selling planes and also working as a charter pilot. That is when I first met him in the mid 90’s. He stopped by my house one evening and introduced himself and had heard hanger gossip that I might me trading up to a larger plane. After letting him know it was a wish my bank account wouldn’t fulfill we sat in my kitchen and swapped sea stories for several hours. I knew that he had played in the Navy and told me that he played it while keeping an eye of the ships generator while they were shelling some island in the Pacific. Turn the clock forward 15 or so years and I was at a jam session at the local fire hall and in walks Charlie with his fiddle. His wife told me he was going stir crazy after being fully retired and she suggested he dig out his fiddle that he hadn’t played for years and get out from under foot. He started played with a couple of groups that I play with until a couple of months ago when his 95 years on this earth finally caught up with him.
He was a member of the “Greatest Generation” whose members are getting fewer every day. I know this was a little long but I believe everyone of us knows a Charlie and we sometimes forget about him or her. We owe a lot to them.
If you would like to read his full obit see; https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/c...n=charles-c-sullivan&pid=191173467&fhid=15341
He was a member of the “Greatest Generation” whose members are getting fewer every day. I know this was a little long but I believe everyone of us knows a Charlie and we sometimes forget about him or her. We owe a lot to them.
If you would like to read his full obit see; https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/c...n=charles-c-sullivan&pid=191173467&fhid=15341
