re: #305 Fat Bastard Vegetarian

My recently deceased friend and hero:

jstor.org
newscenter.berkeley.edu

He did five separate landings, under fire every time, and won the Navy Commendation Medal for picking up wounded men at Omaha beach, completely regardless of his own safety. He then went on to give the most badass answer ever to McCarthyism: refusing to sign the loyalty oath not only because he felt it was unethical but because he had already sworn an oath to the US Navy to uphold the Constitution, and he felt that signing a loyalty oath would violate that greater oath to the Constitution.

He never made much of it, but I never saw Charles exhibit fear, though he often talked about being afraid. He once had a single-engine plane that he was piloting, with which he was unfamiliar, get struck by lightning. Staying calm, he was able to restart it and land safely at an airport. A mutual friend who was with him in the plane said that never once during that did Charles swear or panic in the least.

I miss him a lot.