Passed away June 12th, 2023.
Charlie Welles passed away peacefully and with his family on June 12, 2023.
Charles Edwin Welles III (aka Charlie) was born August 17, 1933, in Troy, New York. Charlie attended a one-room schoolhouse in Bennington Vermont, and the South Kent School in Connecticut. After South Kent, Charlie attended Yale University where he majored in American Studies and met his lifelong friend George (Butch) Cutting.
After his Yale graduation, Charlie worked at National City Bank in New York City. His banking career was short because, as he explained, he did not want to wear a white shirt on days when he preferred to wear a blue shirt. He returned to Yale to study Art History where he struck up the acquaintance of Elizabeth Bassett. They married on July 29, 1960.
In September 1966, Charlie started his career as an English teacher at Hopkins Grammar School where he taught for 32 years. At Hopkins, Charlie taught generations of students with flamboyant, didactic enthusiasm.
After his retirement from Hopkins in 1998, Charlie moved to Homer, where his friends Butch and Lucy Cutting spent the summers. Charlie and the Cuttings adventured around the state. They visited Denali Park, Dutch Harbor, the Pribilofs, and RV’d over to Canada for the Arts Festival in Inuvik. His favorite place to visit was McCarthy and to his great joy he finally convinced two grandsons, Benson and Colman, to visit there last year. He bought a home for himself on Diamond Ridge and volunteered at both theBunnell Gallery and the Kachemak Heritage Land Trust. He was a founding member of the Friday Morning Breakfast club. When the snow on Diamond Ridge became challenging, he started spending winters in South Bristol, Maine. There he met Fran Hewins, who was happy to participate in road trips from Maine to Alaska, meandering drives throughout New England and attendance at the opera.
Just prior to his departure from this world, Charlie attended the graduation of one grandson, Charles Mason, from the Coast Guard Academy, enjoyed a Hudson River cruise on the retired John J. Harvey fireboat with son Chase and watched another grandson, Alden Welles, marry in Prospect Park.
Charlie concluded his adventures on June 12, 2023.
Donations in his memory may be made to the Kachemak Heritage Land Trust, the Hopkins School in New Haven, Connecticut or the Walpole Meeting House in South Bristol, Maine. Charlie is survived by four children, Chase, Edwin, Giles, Talbot and eight grandchildren Benson, Alden, Colman, Charlie, Hannah, Sam, Thomas and Grant.