Grandpa Charlie, A True Original BY- (Little) Charlie Spink

 

Charles "Grandpa Charlie" Michael Spink.

November 5, 1934 - September 23, 2015

    I can now tell you from personal experience that there is nothing in life as humbly horrifying as walking around a memorial service where your name has the top billing on the program. Last week I had to say goodbye to my Grandpa Charlie, who had been courageously battling kidney disease.  He was about to turn 81 years old.  

    While walking around the service I had to check my pulse every few minutes just to make sure that I was still alive and that there hadn't been some kind of mistake . I’m sure that most of us who were in attendance still had that feeling that this whole thing must have been some kind of mistake.

    You can call me biased, but I’ve always thought that “Charlie Spink” was the coolest name in the world. It’s strong, distinctive and not particularly hard to spell.  My favorite part of the name Charlie Spink is who I got it from, Grandpa Charlie: The Original Charlie Spink.

    They say that eventually people will forget your name, they’ll forget everything that you’ve ever said and  if you give them time, they’ll eventually forget everything that you’ve ever done...but they’ll never forget how you made them feel.  Well, I’m here to share with you the way that Grandpa made me feel: honored, respected and above all, loved.  

OLD SCHOOL MEETS GRADE SCHOOL-Grandpa Charlie, a handsome school boy in the early 1940's.

    Charles Michael Spink was the personification of the American Dream.  He was the son of a hard-working immigrant who through his tireless effort and undeniable brilliance was able to put himself through one of our nation’s greatest universities (“Go Cal Golden Bears”) serve our country as a decorated member of the Army’s Core of Engineers and later on become the head of many exotic engineering projects all over the world (from Boston and Barcelona, from San Francisco to Saudi Arabia). 

    These projects improved the quality of life for people the whole world over and by the time he was done, this first-generation American boy from the streets of San Francisco was a Vice President of the World’s largest and most influential engineering firm.   

    I didn’t know Charlie Spink, the world-renowned engineering mastermind that helped to mold the foundation of dozens of cities and train the next generation of Civil Engineers.  Or the dependable Executive who helped turn his local firm into the Global Super power in their field. 

    The man I knew was simply Grandpa Charlie...and he was far more impressive.

    Grandpa Charlie had a well-documented love of knowledge.  Us grandkids used to make fun of the fact that when he met Grandma (aka his lovely wife of over 60 years, Jacquelyn) at a party, that their first conversation was about an advanced algebra class that he was taking.  For some guys that approach wouldn’t have worked but for Grandpa Charlie he used the equation: Impressive intellect PLUS devilish handsomess EQUALS a loving faithful marriage that spanned 7 decades and spawned two of the most-successful, intelligent, well-adjusted and loving men that I know Dad (Chuck Spink) and Uncle Ken.  

A MATCH MADE IN MATH HEAVEN- Grandpa Charlie & Grandma Jackie on their wedding day.

    I was honored to have shared 31 years with this man as my grandfather.  Here are a few of my favorite highlights. 

    Over the years Grandpa shared many of his great loves with me: the City of San Francisco, black olives and Bud Light (which could very well be the title of my own autobiography at this point).

    Grandpa has always had a chair in his house (no matter where the house was) called “The Charlie Chair” it was named that way because only Grandpa Charlie could sit in it.  The Charlie chair was where Grandpa used to sit and read his newspapers, crime novels and issues of Time magazine (as well as the Bible and bedtime stories for the Grandkids who were lucky enough to sleep over at his house).

    It was firm, yet comfortable and had a name that was the polar opposite of the man who sat in it (the Lazy Boy). The chair had well-worn cushions that were probably brown at some point but now have a color similar to that of strained carrots, it’s wooden arm-rests looked old enough to have been planks on Noah’s Ark and the reclining mechanism is closer to the technology that you’d see on a mid-evil catapult than anything you’d see down at a Modern Furniture store.  But it was dependable, always there for you after a long day to help you take a load off and listen to your body’s problems. That chair always had your back, that chair was a lot like it’s owner.  

    Then I came along, and I was also named Charlie, or “Little Charlie” as Grandma calls me.  It’s funny a bunch of girls in College started referring to me as “Little Charlie” (usually with some amount of pointing and laughing involved). My first question to them was always “How do you know my Grandmother?” Apparently, they had never met my grandmother...it's a long story...okay it's a short story...hey, it's a perfectly normal and decent-sized story (it was often very cold in the dorms). 

    Being that Grandpa Charlie was my Grandfather (and that my name was Charlie) I was Grandfathered-into being allowed to sit in the chair. Then when I was a teenager Grandpa Charlie moved on to a different chair, and when he got rid of the original Charlie chair he asked me if I wanted the old one and I said “Heck yeah.”

    I took the "Charlie Chair"  with me to college and back and it now sits in my office (I'm sitting in it as I write this right now) and it is the only piece of furniture that I really ever felt like I owned.  And I guarantee that if my wife Kristina and I ever get separated it will be the only piece of furniture that she wouldn’t want in the settlement. Not just because she knows that I have a strong emotional attachment to the chair, but also because she’s never really been a fan of the strained carrot colored upholstery. 

    Anybody who knew Grandpa, knew that he was a man who loved to build things and tinker around the house.  No project was too big and no fix was too small for grandpa to dust off his trusty tool-belt and go to work.

    When I was three years old I remember that Grandpa wanted to buy me a race car bed for my birthday. But when he went to the furniture store he was thoroughly unimpressed by the quality of what they had in-stock. He realized that all of the race-car beds seemed poorly-made and over-priced. So being the resourceful "Bob the Builder" type man that he was, he told me “Charlie I can make you a race car bed for half the cost that’ll be twice as nice."  And he did. 
  
    My candy-apple red race-car bed had a sweet paint-job and real reflective head and tail lights. The bed also had a two-toned bumper and a custom racing stripe down the side of it. Forget the bedroom, this thing looked like it was ready for the Indy 500. I got that bed when I was three and I slept in it until I was seventeen (really I did).  The first time that I brought a girl up to my bedroom she took one look at my race-car bed and said (in a dead-pan voice) “Wow.” Just like that.  I could tell that she was also impressed by Grandpa’s handiwork and painstaking attention to detail. 

    The building of the race-car bed really speaks to who Grandpa was, somebody who put others first and was willing to put in hard-work and utilize his talents to make sure that his loved ones could sleep comfortably at night. 

THE ENGINEER, THE DRIVER & THE PIT CREW-(Left to Right) Grandma Jackie, Mom, Grandpa Charlie and I getting ready to take the race-car bed for a spin. 

    At this point Grandpa just sounds like a great maker and trader of custom furniture but he was so much more than that.

    Here’s another great example of how prolific his mind was. When I was about 12 I was over at Grandma and Grandpa’s house and the Kevin Costner movie “Water-World” was on TV.  For those of you who don’t remember it: good. It was a terrible movie (no need to Netflix it). "Water-World" was a futuristic Action/Adventure Movie that took place in a reality in which the Polar Ice Caps had melted and the world was covered in Water (Al Gore made a way less exciting sequel about 10 years ago).  

    After the first ten minutes of the movie Grandpa told me “Charlie, that’s not the way that real water displacement in the ocean works.” And then he changed the topic. I was like “Whatever you say grandpa, there are guys on Jetski’s shooting bazookas at each other so were watching this movie.”

    The next time that I came over Grandpa had cut a block of ice (1 foot by 2 feet) and put it in his bath-tub with a ruler, a wooden block that represented land and sea-level and a small heater to melt the ice...just so he could show me how “water world’s” premise was all washed up.  Grandpa had a beautiful mind, he understood so much about how the world (even a fictional, futuristic one) worked and he loved nothing more than sharing that gift with loved ones. Grandpa Charlie always respected me and had enough faith in people to tell them the truth (even when it hurt). He was an incredibly honest man. 

    Grandpa Charlie was a man of great faith.  On top of being my grandfather he was also my confirmation sponsor and my math tutor.  Some of you may be thinking “Being a math tutor doesn’t involve a lot of faith.” Well anybody who would say that obviously hadn’t seen my test scores.  I needed both prayer and study time to pass trigonometry at De La Salle and Grandpa was there to support me with plenty of both. Let's just say that I didn't have the type of math skills that would help me pick-up on a pretty lady at a party.

    Grandpa Charlie was always there for me even when he wasn’t actually there.  Grandpa was a big part of my marriage proposal to my wife Kristina, because I made up a story about me and Grandpa to add legitimacy to the back-drop of my proposal. I asked Kristina to be my wife on the Golden Gate Bridge. That way if she said no I could jump off and that'd be the end of things (talk about a pretty solid back-up plan).  

    Anyways, while we were standing on the bridge I gave Kristina a penny and told her that Grandpa Charlie used to take me to the bridge when I was little (which he did) and right when we’d get over the water he would hand me a penny and say “Make a wish.” So I gave Kristina a penny, I told her to make a wish and after she threw the penny into the water, she turned around and saw me down on one knee with an open ring-box. That's right, I proposed to Kristina on the Golden Gate Bridge as the September sunset danced it's way across the choppy waters of the bay.  

    Spoiler alert, she said yes.  Now all of us who knew Grandpa would know that that was a cockamamie story. Grandpa would never have told me to throw a penny into the bay and “Make a Wish” because that would literally be “Throwing money away.” Grandpa was a strong believer in saving your money and using it in conjunction with hard work and dedication in order to make your dreams come true.  

    Speaking of pennies, Grandpa came from very humble beginnings and became a self-made man of great wealth but he never sacrificed his morality to build his financial fortune. In fact he used his strong moral compass to build the friendships that were represented at his service. No matter how much money he had in the bank, he always knew that his most valuable asset was the love and respect that he had accumulated from his peers, throughout a life of generosity and kindness.  It was in this sense that Grandpa was a very rich man.   

    If I was on the Golden Gate Bridge with a penny right now I would wish to have the same type of impact on the world that Grandpa had.

    Grandpa was there to see me get married and have children.  He had always been a "great" grandfather and I am proud that through my reproductive ways that I officially made him a Great-grandfather. 

    One of the last long-talks that I had with Grandpa was when he was in the hospital about a month before his passing and he was telling me about his and Grandma’s favorite show “NCIS” (Which stands for "Naval Criminal Investigation Service" it's on CBS. Check it out, it's way better than "Water-world"). 

    Even in his final painful days he was able to find humor in the world.  He told me “One of the better parts of being as old as I am, is that I can watch an episode of NCIS with your Grandma and figure out who the killer is early in the episode.  I feel pretty good about the whole thing until Jackie points out that it’s a re-run and we’ve seen it before.”

    Grandpa told me “NCIS was great when it was just in New York.  You’d think that there’d be enough crimes to solve in New York to keep the show going forever.  But then they came up with NCIS: Los Angeles and NCIS: Las Vegas and so on and so fourth, but none of them are as good as the original.  Charlie, there’s nothing like the original.”

    Looking back on the man who had set the bar so high on being a husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather in this life all I can say is...thank you mom and dad for naming me after this guy.  Grandpa Charlie, I am honored to have shared your name and I will do everything I can to bring the type of honor to it that you did throughout your life.  

    Now I am also a Charlie Spink...but Grandpa you were THE CHARLIE SPINK.  You were a true original ...and there’s nothing like an original.

I Love You Grandpa. 

Your Proud Grandson.            

Little Charlie

TWO CHARLIES ARE BETTER THAN ONE- Grandpa Charlie (left), Little Charlie (me, right) boarding a plane together a couple of years ago. As always Grandpa was a step ahead of me, and now he's in a place high above  where the planes fly.