ForeverMissed
Large image
His Life

Biography by Jimmy :)

December 10, 2012

Charles Kenneth Chouanard         last updated 18 July 2012, 8:00pm

Chuck Chouanard was born September 4th 1957 at Immanuel St Joseph Hospital in Mankato, Minnesota to Janice and Kenneth Chouanard. They took him home to join his elder sister, Cindy, at a rented farmhouse in New Sweden Township. The farmhouse did not yet have indoor plumbing. Ken Chouanard farmed and did custom picking and silage chopping for a neighbor to the west named Bobby Lund.  Janice was a homemaker and worked nights as an operator for Northwestern Bell in St Peter.

Charles Kenneth Chouanard was christened on September 29th 1957, by Fr. Raymond Rypel. His godparents were Marilyn and Ernest Chouanard.  He shared his first name with his granduncle, Charles Boucher, who had died seven years earlier of a cancer related illness.

In spring of 1961, Ken and Janice had to give up farming. Chuck moved with his family, which now included two younger brothers, to the St Peter home of Myrtle and Grace Kaveney (his grandma and aunt) for a brief stay. Soon they moved to the old Boucher home on old Highway 169, north of where the current Holiday Station is located. The home had been the home of Chuck’s great grandfather, William Boucher. Ken was employed by his uncle Floyd Boucher driving bus and doing a variety of mechanic and farm chores.  Janice, who was laid-off from the phone company when direct dial calls were introduced, was a busy homemaker as the next four children arrived while they lived at this address. In the ensuing years, Chuck and his siblings would soon find plenty to do and “get into” playing in the hollow of the long row of lilac bushes next to the house and poking around in the barn, the bus garages and the other out-buildings.

In the fall of 1963, riding bus number 5, Chuck attended kindergarten taught by Mrs. Johnson at the Central Annex School. The following autumn of 1964 he started the first of two years in the classroom of Sr. Bernita at John Ireland School. Sr. Bernita was small in stature but made up for her diminutive size with her tongue of fire and brimstone. She had a split classroom of first and second graders and, even though there were two classrooms of each grade level, Chuck was lucky enough to be in her class both years. He made his first communion while her pupil and then moved on to third grade with Mrs. Schmidt. 

About the summer of 1964, Chuck wore a suit and tie for the first time as the ring-bearer for his Aunt Marilyn Chouanard’s wedding.

Summers during this period saw Chuck walking with younger brothers down old Highway 169 to the former Dairy Queen with 15 cents in their pockets to buy dilly bars or standing east of their home along the construction zone of the new four-lane Highway 169, pumping their arms to prompt the passing operators of scrapers, bulldozers, and graders to honk their horns. The operators honked willingly at first but after a while started to ignore the boys because of the repetition. About this time, Chuck started using his father’s baseball glove to play ball. Ken was a lefthander and Chuck was a righty but, true to Chuck’s nature of perseverance, he learned to catch and throw left and still batted right-handed. Later, his first glove of his own was also a lefthander’s glove. The Minnesota Twins were hot in those years and the talk about the Twin’s successes found receptive ears among young boys who daydreamed about hitting like Harmon Killebrew.

Soon Ken Chouanard  took a job driving bus for Midwest Coaches out of Mankato. This job frequently kept him out of town and away from home. This often made Chuck the oldest male in the house.

On a hot summer night about 1967, Chuck may have saved his family from the threat of a fire. After everyone had gone to bed Chuck heard a popping noise and noticed that the electric motor of the old metal window fan in the bedroom he shared with Ron had burst into flame. Chuck shouted out the alarm - Fire! Fire! Dad was on a bus trip but mom and Cindy came running. The fan was unplugged and Cindy threw a tall glass of water on the fan to extinguish it. It took a while to fall back asleep with nerves rattled and the stink of burnt wiring in the air.

After third grade, Chuck’s parents moved him and his brother Ron to Central Grade School over concerns about dealing with the “book bill” as tuition was called back then. Central school gave Chuck the opportunity to become a student of Mr. Erickson, the band instructor. From Mr. Erickson Chuck received his first lessons on the trombone. By sixth grade, his band performed Little Brown Jug and Hogan’s Heroes March for parents and family in the Central Grade School gymnasium.

Chuck tried to do some field-work the summer of 1968, walking the bean fields for Drenttels cutting down weeds with a sickle. The job did not last long as Chuck injured his heal with the sickle and had to quit.

On December 6, 1968 Chuck’s family moved from the Boucher home to the Kendall farm place on Lake Washington. This farmhouse had been the childhood home of his great grandmother, Grace Kendall. A farmhouse with a large dairy barn and outbuildings situated between the wooded north shore of Lake Washington on one side and the fields and marshes on the other was a wonderful playground for an 11-year boy. Small discoveries could lead to days of recreation. The barn had a manure bucket, which could traverse the barn running on a track that hung from the ceiling. The track ran out the northeast door to the north barnyard for thirty feet hanging from a mast. The mast was hinged and could swing a 180-degree arc. Chuck and his brothers quickly realized that they could play “paratroopers” jumping from the track of the swinging mast arm. The boys, who often included the Kaveney cousins, would unchain the mast from the concrete stock tank and with a good run across the top of the stock tank enclosure, they would launch themselves out over the barnyard hanging from the track. If they had launched themselves fast enough, they would swing the full arc to the north barn wall where they would kick themselves off in the reverse direction and then they would choose the moment to drop, or “parachute”, and try to avoid the stinging nettles. It was a lot of fun for little boys.

Chuck had been a cub scout for three years and participated in the pinewood derby. He was in his second year of Webelos when the move to Lake Washington occurred. He finished Webelos but did not continue on to boy scouts because of the difficulties of transportation to den meetings.

On school bus number 3 he met new friends like the Schwichtenbergs who connected Chuck to his second field job, pulling weeds from the bean fields of Romie Michels near Lake Emily. Chuck noted that Romie’s fields had a lot of milkweeds.

In the fall of 1969 Chuck and Ron made their confirmation. Fifth and sixth graders made their confirmation together in that time. Chuck’s sponsor was Wayne Kaveney and he chose the name Joseph.

There were, from time to time, shenanigans at the lake house and Chuck participated with no great reluctance.

On one occasion in October of 1969, when the garden was behind the barn between uncle Bob’s unpicked cornfield and the old right of way, mom commanded as she left for town that the older boys should “get out there and dig those potatoes before the ground freezes.” With shovels, garden fork, wheelbarrow and two children’s wagons the older four boys went out to dig potatoes and bring them back to the basement storage bin. The boys quickly noticed that the cucumbers had over grown into the potato patch and they were large, orange and squishy to the touch. The cucumbers would explode like a water balloon when tossed. It didn’t take long for Chuck and Ron to launch a couple at their younger siblings and the cucumber fight was on. Although Chuck presented a big target in the big dumpy mustard colored coat that he wore, he could also throw a cucumber further than anyone else and caused the younger brothers to often retreat into the corn rows. Soon mom came home. There weren’t many potatoes in the wagons and the boys were busy trying to destroy the evidence of cucumber seeds and mush on their jackets. When they recalled this event recently, both Chuck and Ron remembered mirthfully how they launched a parting shot at the stock tank near the barn and, just before the cucumber grenade splashed across the concrete surface of the stock tank, a younger brother lifted his head to peer over the tank to see if the coast was clear. It still gave them a smirk.

With eight children in the house, there was often teasing and fighting going on. On one occasion Chuck and Ron were wrestling on their parent’s bed. The bedroom was downstairs off the living room. In their struggle they kicked out the window glass. They cautiously closed the bedroom door to keep the cold night air out of the living room as if to delay their parent’s discovery.

At another time, Chuck and Ron were doing dishes in the evening while the parents were out. An argument erupted as frequently did. Ron brandished the butcher knife he was wiping and threatened Chuck. Chuck fled away from the knife-point into the dining room and started to run the circle: dining room to living room to parent’s bedroom to bathroom hall and back to the dining room. Ron was in close pursuit with the knife. When Ron realized he was chasing Chuck with a butcher knife, he quickly thought better of it, placed the knife on a chair in the dining room and fled in the opposite direction. Chuck stopped, turned and gave chase to Ron, snatching up the butcher knife on the way. Holding the knife tightly in his hand with blade facing upwards Chuck was not prepared for Ron’s slamming the bedroom door before him. Chuck ran flat into the door. The knife stuck in the door as Chuck’s hand slid forward along the blade. After home medical treatment had been performed and younger siblings threatened, a story was recited to the parents about getting cut on a broken glass bottle in the granary.

Once, after lunch in the early afternoon during a Christmas week break from school, Chuck and his brothers decided to go sledding. Cindy, the eldest child and permanently assigned baby-sitter, said that the youngest children, specifically Dan and Howard, were supposed to take naps by mom’s instructions and she was adamant about this position. After an exchange of words the elder boys feigned acceptance of the decree and turned to leave. On their way out the door, when Cindy was out of eye-shot, they gathered up the winter clothing of the younger boys and took it with them. Outside, Chuck and Ron hoisted the ladder to the porch roof. On the roof, Chuck and his brothers removed the storm window and slid open the sash. Cindy heard the window and arrived upstairs just as Dan escaped out onto the roof. Dan missed his nap that afternoon.

Chuck and his siblings quarrelled over riduculous things as siblings do. Often when the arguments reached a heated point and Chuck wanted to break off the discussion he would comment “You’re so full of it your eyes are brown!” He obviously did not use the word “it”. He was the only sibling that did not have brown eyes and this comment often caused the other sibling’s debate to stumble and Chuck would smirk. He got to use that phrase often.

About the summer of 1970, T.R. Kaveney gave Chuck and Ron his old lime green wooden boat. They didn’t have a motor yet so they trolled without one. One would fish and the other rowed and then they traded places. Trolling must have been quite a workout. At the end of the season they drug the boat up the steep hillside from the lake to store it. A year or so later an abandoned fiberglass boat washed up on the shore. Chuck and his brothers repaired it, licensed it and painted it blue and white and began to put it to use in place of the heavy wooden boat. Chuck and Ron then bought a 5.5 horse Evinrude boat motor from Sach Williams for $150 and the days of rowing and trolling were over.

Chuck was a guy who was never afraid of work. Starting with pulling weeds the summer of 1969 for Romie Michels, he followed it with the next two summers pulling weeds for T.R. Kaveney and then the next two pulling weeds for Rolly Schwichtenburg and Bill Davis as well as baling for T.R. Kaveney and Bill Davis. The summer of 1972 he also mowed the rectory lawn and cemetery of Marysburg with his younger brothers. In July of 1974 he took a job as a farm hand for (Bill?) Osborn. He lived on the Osborn farm during the week, milking and doing other chores and he would return to the Lake Washington house on Sunday mornings after milking was complete. At the end of that July he fell ill with a lung infection from dust in the granary, quit Osborn’s and returned home. That fall he started working weekends at his uncle Lyle’s car wash in Mankato on Front Street (Riverfront Street now) and Madison Avenue. The summer of 1975 he worked Pea-Pack for Green Giant as a field utility man. He continued working for Lyle at the car wash on weekends and occasionally, after finishing work on Saturdays, he went to Lyle’s house to babysit while Lyle and Peggy went out for the evening. His senior year in high school was much the same, working for Lyle on weekends and in the summer he worked pea-pack and then corn pack at the plant in LeSueur. When he entered Mankato Vocational Technical School (now South Central College) in the fall of 1976 he was working almost full-time for Lyle throughout the school year.

Chuck’s jobs were mostly local farm jobs until, after the last day of his sophomore year, in the spring of 1974 his father told him he had a car for him to buy for $150. He took Chuck to the salesman, Nestor, who showed him a blue and white 1960 Plymouth Savoy with manual transmission. The car had upright fins in the back and he endured a few jokes about them. Then Chuck could take jobs and participate in sports as he pleased.

Chuck enjoyed sports and frequently played football or softball with his brothers and the Kaveney boys during his grade school years. In high school Chuck went out for football from his 7th to 12th grade years. He lettered in football. In his senior year the St Peter High School football team competed for the state title against St Thomas Academy losing in a tight match. He went out for track in 10th grade and in 11th and 12th he went out for wrestling and baseball.

Besides fishing Chuck liked to hunt. He started first with an over and under 4-10 shotgun and soon acquired a pump 16 gage shotgun. The first duck he got was a spoonbill down in the marsh of T.R. Kaveney’s pasture. Soon he had moved on to pheasant hunting and deer hunting. He tried trapping muskrats one winter down in the marshes of Kaveney’s pasture. Howard remembers riding along with Chuck on his Rupp snowmobile pulling a sled of traps and equipment as they went down to check on Chuck’s trap lines. On that particular occasion one of Chuck’s boots went through the ice over a muskrat run and his foot got soaked.

In school Chuck took agriculture class from 9th grade on and joined FFA. He participated in FFA competitions like farm management and dairy judging, the latter of which he said he found difficult because he was not on a dairy farm on a daily basis and lacked the experience of his FFA friends like Paul and Willy. He played softball in yearly match between St Peter’s and Nicollet’s FFA chapters. Like his fellow FFA chapter members he helped operate the St Peter FFA’s petting zoo of various farm animals at the Nicollet County Fair. At the end of his junior year, Chuck was elected vice president of St Peter High School’s FFA chapter. At home Chuck experimented, first getting a few feeder pigs to raise and fill-out from Bill Davis. The next year he bought a bred Hampshire sow from Koppleman’s and soon after he bought a bred Duroc sow from Bill Davis. The results were mixed. The Duroc sow bore eight piglets but the Hampshire sow only bore one piglet.

On Friday the 10th of January 1975, school let out early for an anticipated snowstorm. In the early evening, Chuck and Ron went over to the neighbor’s houses to baby-sit while the elder neighbors had a snowmobiling party. By 8:30pm the power had gone out, the snowmobiling party ended early  and Chuck and Ron returned home. The blizzard dumped a couple feet of snow and the wind whipped it into amazing drifts. With no power for heat the Chouanard house grew colder. While their mother, Janice, and sister, Cindy, slept in the adjacent room, Chuck and his six younger siblings brought their bedding down to the living room in an attempt to stay warm by numbers gathered together in the same room. Ken was away on a bus trip and was trapped in a small town in southwest Minnesota.  Fortunately the gas stove in the kitchen still worked because, with no electricity, the pump could not bring water up from the well. Snow was gathered and melted in a kettle on the stove for household use. For more drinking water, Chuck and Ron set out on Chuck’s Rupp snowmobile to get water from someone on Connor’s point where power had been restored on Saturday the 11th. Chuck and Ron got two jugs water and the wind was so fierce that they had to stop to warm their hands at the fireplace of a neighbor on this relatively short trip. Phone service was not lost and by mid-morning the 12th of January Uncle T.R. Kaveney called to say that their power had been restored and that the Chouanards would be able to watch the Vikings and the Steelers in the Super Bowl if they could get over to his house. The skies were clearing and Chuck was able to start his Rupp snowmobile again. He then transferred his 7 siblings and his mother one by one the mile and a half over to T.R. Kaveney’s house. The snowmobile ride was more fun than the game. The Chouanards stayed there until the power came back on at their house the next day.

In large families hand-me-downs are common. So it was in Chuck’s family too. To his younger brothers, Chuck passed down clothing articles, football cletes, an FFA jacket that had “Charles Chouanard, Chapter Vice President” stitched into it and a nickname. One high school football season, a fellow student, perhaps Dave Schmitz, called Chuck “Schnouzer”. The name stuck and spread through the football team. During Chuck’s senior year, his brother Ron was also on the team. Chuck’s friends started to call Ron “baby Schnouz”. When Chuck graduated, Ron was called “Schnouzer” and the next brother, Jim was called “baby Schnouz”.  The hand-me-down nickname migrated down through most of the brothers.

Chuck graduated from St Peter High School in the spring of 1976 and the following fall he started school at Mankato Vocation Technical School. He completed his first year there and May of 1977 he was offered an internship for Sib Simes at Simes Incorporated in Walters, Minnesota. Simes made bin jacks for erecting grain bins. He found an apartment nearby in Kiester, Minnesota. Next door to his apartment building lived Marie, whose high school friend and frequent visitor was one Charlotte Hanson. Chuck had met the love of his life.

After two months Chuck had decided not to return to school and stay with Simes and he moved into a basement apartment with a co-worker named Jeff. Two months later he bought a trailer and a lot in Walters for $4500 to which he and Jeff moved in.

Sometime during 1978 Chuck came back to the house on Lake Washington with a pretty blonde girl. After introducing Charlotte, or Charley, as we all know her now, to the family, the younger brothers turned to each other with some surprise. Chuck was always a shy person when it came to girls so you can imagine the younger brothers turning to each other and silently mouthing with evident shock and awe, “Chuck’s got a girlfriend??!”

Chuck went to Charley’s proms, wearing a dark green tux with a cummerbund to one of them.

Chuck had a motorcycle during this period and nearly crashed it trying to do stunts on Walter’s main street. He also grew his first full beard during this period.

Chuck’s was dedicated and loyal to his work. Simes sent Chuck to deliver bin jacks around the upper Midwest region. At one point he went to deliver bin jacks to a site in Nebraska and Sib Simes was nervous about the purchaser. Sib told Chuck not to leave there without a check for the full amount for the bin jacks. Chuck arrived and the purchaser said he would pay him at the end of the day. So Chuck worked all day setting up the bin jacks with the local crew and showing them how to operate them. At the end of this long day he went into the office of the purchaser who was also the employer of the crews Chuck had been working with. The purchaser gave him a check for a fraction of the amount and told him that was all he was going to get at this time. Chuck was frustrated. He noticed the deputy sheriff’s car at the diner in this small town. He made a plan and went in and told the deputy. Chuck waited until after dark, long after the crews he had worked with had departed. He then went to the job site and single-handedly disassembled all the bin jacks and reloaded on his truck and trailer. He finished just in time to pull away as the crews he had trained the day before were arriving. He was worried what he would say to Sib Simes. He called Sib after driving for a while. Sib happily told him to return to the job site; the purchaser would hand him a cashier’s check when he arrived.

Chuck would quite often push himself to exhaustion for work. On one occasion, equipment needed to be picked up from Assumption Illinois by the next day. Chuck accepted to do the run. He came home at the end of the workday, showered and changed and headed for Assumption in the work truck. He drove all night. In the early morning light he fell asleep and rolled the truck. It landed right side up in a deep “V” ditch. He wore his seat belts and he was OK. Fortunately the truck had an overhead rack which protected the cab from collapsing. He caught a ride the 10 miles into Assumption and got a tow. At a gas station in Assumption he hammered some equipment back into place with a sledge. He called Simes who asked him if he was OK and if the truck was operable, “then finish the run”, which Chuck did.

After two years Chuck was ready to strike out on his own. In May of 1979 he bought a set of bin jacks from Simes and quit his position there. With his high school classmate Tim Kennedy they formed the company K&C Erectors to build grain bins and other structures. Their first job was to erect two Quonset huts near St James.

In September of 1979 Chuck sold his lot and trailer in Walters and moved into the basement of his mother’s house in St Peter. She had just sold the Lake Washington house the month before. Chuck was focused on his new business.

Chuck had a bad setback in October of 1979. His crew had assembled a door-less bin and the equipment was passed up and out the top hatch. Finally when all was done and all were out of the bin at dusk it was Chuck’s turn to come out. He climbed up the rope and at the summit he seemed to lose his grip and he fell. He landed flatfooted and broke his ankle on one side, two leg bones in the other side and his back. One of his vertebrae had exploded from the impact. His co-workers called down into the dark bin looking for him and shaking the rope. He called back not to touch the rope because his legs were stilled entangled in it. The crew removed a panel from the side of the bin for the ambulance crew. Chuck was taken to nearby Zumbrota and then to St Mary’s in Rochester. Besides the casts on his foot and leg he was put in a body cast. He was released from the hospital for a meal on Thanksgiving at his Aunt Grace’s in Owatonna but returned to stay at the hospital until December. Then he was released to his mother’s home in St Peter. He was in a body cast for over two months. Eventually his little sister Maureen had taken to calling him “penguin” for the way he waddled about the house in his cast. His business survived and Chuck was able to work the next summer.

Chuck’s grain bin building eventually took him out of the country. In early July of 1981 (after the funeral of Chuck’s grandma Kaveney) he and Tim Kennedy and his former boss Sib Simes went to northern Mexico to construct 12 bins for the government. The site was near San Fernando, which is two hours south of Brownsville Texas. Crews were hired locally for them to direct in the construction. There were many frustrations with the project and delays but after two months on site the 12 bins were built.

After that, Chuck briefly entertained an invitation to build grain bins in Tanzania, Africa but he decided against it.

Chuck experienced a second truck rollover around the winter of 1981. This time the truck was his own old red 1964 Ford pickup. The roll-over occurred on an “S” curve on Highway 13 north of North Mankato in the very early hours of a Sunday morning in January. Chuck had enjoyed some drinks earlier in the evening and was heading to Charley’s apartment in Mankato. By this time Charley was going to school at South Central College and living in Mankato. The truck again ended up right side up with little damage perhaps because of the snow. He again wore his safety belt and was OK although perhaps a bit more sober. But his truck needed a tow to get out of the ditch. He then walked all the way to Charlotte’s apartment in the cold and dark. He returned in the daylight to tow the truck out.

In 1982 Chuck bought a trailer on a rented piece of land next to Shanaska Creek and Highway 22.

Chuck finally married Charley on 24 September 1983 at St Mary’s Church in St Peter. Chuck’s groomsmen were his brother Ron, Steve Wenner, Steve Menk and Tim Kennedy. Mike and Dan Chouanard and Jeff and Craig Hanson were ushers and Chuck’s nephew Matt Lynch was the ring bearer. Charley’s bride’s maids included Robin Wacholz, Rosalyn Hanson, Linda Boucher and Maria Hampton. Her personal attendant was Susan Underbakke and her flower girl was her niece MacKenzie Hanson. Fr. Harry Majerus officiated. The dance and reception were held at the new armory on the north side of St Peter and it was a very fun wedding.  Charley then moved from the apartment she was sharing with Linda Boucher (Hilligoss) on Riggs Road in St Peter out to the trailer on Shanaska Creek. Two nights before an incident occurred that could have upset the wedding plans. On Thursday night before the wedding, Chuck and his groomsmen went to get fitted for their tuxes. After doing so they went out bar-hopping until bar closing. After closing the last bar they went for a very early breakfast at the Country Kitchen. During the meal, Chuck said he needed to leave the table for a bit. The others finished their meals but Chuck did not return. The groomsmen searched for him in the bathroom, their two cars and the parking lot but he was not found. They broke into two groups and traced the path one might take if walking from the restaurant to Charley’s apartment or to Janice’s house. You can imagine Charley and Janice reacting to the situation that the groomsmen had lost the groom. The two parties scouted around St. Peter’s streets and returned to the Country Kitchen parking lot. They saw a man standing next to a car and a spare tire lying on the ground. Upon approaching him, he told the groomsmen that there was someone sleeping in his car. It was Chuck. Ironically the car owner was the last bar tender who served them at Whiskey River before closing. The bar tender had come over for breakfast at Country Kitchen too. He said he kept this spare tire in the back seat. Evidently, in his temporary state of confusion, Chuck pulled the tire out onto the ground and crawled in to sleep. The bar tender said that it was a good thing that Chuck entered the car from the driver’s side so the bar tender saw the tire on the ground as he approached his car. Had Chuck entered from the passenger side he would have never seen the tire and in the darkness he would not have noticed Chuck in the back seat either. He was just about to leave on an overnight drive back to his hometown in Wisconsin.

In about 1985 Chuck joined the Kasota Volunteer Fire department; it was something he was very proud of. At around the same time he and Charley bought the farm site of the former Rolly Schwichtenberg farm. Gradually they would clear the buildings in preparation for building a new home there. Chuck incorporated the Kasota Fire Department holding practice burns on the old farmhouse as part of its demolition.

In 1987, Chuck bought out Tim Kennedy’s interest in K&C Erectors and became sole owner. He did not run the company much longer. In December of 1989 he closed K&C Erectors. By January of 1990 he started working at Uninmin mining. (Was he elected shop steward for the Teamsters or a similar capacity during his time at Unimin?)

On the 8th of September 1990 Tyler, their first child, was born to Chuck and Charley.

Charley had been working at the nursing home part of the St Peter Hospital. She then started courses at St Kate’s in St Paul for Occupational Therapy, making the long and frequent commutes to the college. Upon completing her courses and getting her degree she was offered a job in 1992 in Johnson City Tennessee. There was a relative abundance of occupational therapists in Minnesota and a relative lack of them in the southeast US. The experience Charley would gain working in this profession at a large southern hospital chain would make her a much more competitive candidate in a future job search in southern Minnesota. Chuck and Charley tore down the trailer on Shanaska Creek and in August of 1992 they moved to Gray Tennessee with Tyler and their cat Chloe.

With his wife employed in a good profession, Chuck decided to make a change too. He took advantage of the moment and attended the local state technical college taking general education requirements and electrical studies. He also got involved with whitewater rafting and got a job with Cherokee Adventures in the spring of 1993 as a rafting guide.

By the summer of 1993 he had a job offering at Bristol Compressor. To be accepted at Bristol Compressor he was required to work a straight 90 days for 7 days a week with no sick days and no days off.  This was apparently Bristol Compressor’s way of vetting its potential employees. Chuck accepted and quit his job with Cherokee Adventures. He worked in the engineering lab at Bristol. After the 90 days was complete that autumn, he managed his schedule by working evenings and weekends so he could continue his schooling.

Eventually Charley was able to find a position as an occupational therapist in southern Minnesota and in February 1995 the family came back to Minnesota. Four-year old Tyler came back with an eastern Tennessee drawl. Initially Chuck, Charley and Tyler resided with Ron and Jane Chouanard. From the summer of 1995, Chuck and Charley rented the home of a Gustavus professor on sabbatical located near Washington Park. Chuck now pursued a career as an electrician and found work as an apprentice. Chuck also rejoined the Kasota Fire Department. Chuck also joined the Knights of Columbus.

By the early 1996 Chuck and Charley had formed their plans for a house to be constructed on the old Schwichtenberg farm site they purchased a decade earlier and excavation was commenced. Although some contractors were hired for some portions of the construction, Chuck, Charley, friends and relatives performed a lot of the construction on evenings and weekends. In the summer of 1996 the professor on sabbatical had returned and they vacated the house by Washington Park and moved in with his Aunt Grace Kaveney whose home is not far from Chuck and Charley’s property. Finally by November of 1996 their new home was complete enough that they could move into its basement. Their new home was given the address of 33280 476th Street, Kasota.

Chuck had been performing electrical work at various commercial and institutional sites for the balance 1996. On Martin Luther King Day, January 1997, his company was going to do electrical work at South Central College in Mankato. But because of the holiday, College maintenance staff would be unavailable to give them access to the necessary work areas so his crew was sent to do a wiring job at Immanuel St Joseph’s Emergency Department. Chuck was up in the drop ceiling of the hospital emergency area running wire near noon and he turned to his work partner, Norm, and asked him to pass up more wire. Norm responded that they should stop and take lunch. Chuck descended the ladder and as he walked across the room he collapsed with a major seizure and went “code blue”. Fortunately for everyone he was already at the emergency room. Staff came and revived him and rushed him to St Mary’s in Rochester. It was discovered that he had a tumor near the crest of his skull.

Within a week Chuck had surgery to remove the tumor. Another week later he was home again and up and about answering the door to guests at his homecoming party. The surgery had left him with a mark on his head in an area where he was already balding but the energy he displayed was remarkable for a man who just had brain surgery. Radiation and Chemo treatment followed over the coming months.

Chuck eventually return to work but one of the biggest struggles was containing the seizures that followed. Chuck could tell when a seizure was approaching. Once at a family picnic in the summer of 1997 he was chatting with brothers in Cindy’s yard. Suddenly he said to his brothers “grab me”.  Just as he said this, his left side went limp and he started to fall. His brothers caught him as he fell and laid him down on the grass. In a few minutes it over and after a rest he was up and about again. When a seizure occurred the best response was for him to sit down or better yet, lay down. Chuck had seizure medications but they made him drowsy. His electrical work involved longer and longer commutes to job sites. This left him with difficult choices: the medications made him drowsy on the long drives, without the medication he might risk a seizure at work or during the drive. He probably gave Charley a lot of anxiety and gray hair over this issue.

Chuck was away with his brother and the St Peter Knights of Columbus at a bowling tournament during the St Peter tornado of 1998. Fortunately his family and new home outside St Peter were spared any damage.

Chuck and Charley wanted to adopt. They worked with a program at Lutheran Social Services for adoption. This led to them traveling on July 7th, 1999 with several couples to Simferopol, Ukraine, to where they adopted Andrey. Andrey had been born on July 18th, 1996. After a difficult time they finally returned on July 30th 1999 with their newest addition to the family. Over the next year Chuck’s relatives would see the image of little Andrey seated upon Chuck’s lap at mealtimes. Chuck was making sure that Andrey would swallow his food because he seemed to want to squirrel it away for a later time.

Chuck became a journeyman electrician and as a member of the IBEW. Soon he was driving up to Minneapolis to do work from the IBEW local there.  In 2007, he was hired by Xcel Energy. Xcel’s projects sent Chuck around the region and often required him to stay in motels near the sites. The struggle to contain the seizures continued with some success.

In June of 2010 Chuck and Charley and their children joined with Ron and Jane and their kids and Ron and Chuck’s mother and made classic the long driving trip to the Grand Canyon driving a couple of vehicles.  About this year Chuck found it appropriate to retire from the Kasota Volunteer Fire Department.

In May of 2011 another tumor was located near the previous one. This was followed by surgery and then chemotherapy. Radiation treatment could not be used again.

In September of 2011 Chuck completed something that has probably been on his bucket list for a long time. Charley and the kids gave him a skydiving gift certificate. So he dove out into the sky near Waseca on a sunny September day. The large Chouanard family Christmas, with all 7 siblings’ families, was celebrated at his house that year. His relatives watched the video of his skydiving and Chuck looked thrilled.

In the week that spanned the last days of February the first few days of March 2012 Chuck was working for Xcel in Lacrosse Wisconsin. He typically took the stairs up to the job location for the exercise and he noticed he was fatigued more than he should be. He went to the hospital there and was informed that his test results would be forwarded to Rochester where he could learn the results. That next week he and Charley were told that a new tumor was found; this came only a little over a month after previous tests had showed no tumor.  Chuck stopped working and chemo-treatment was revised. Chuck was notably more tired to visiting relatives over the next weeks.

Nevertheless Chuck came out for St Patrick’s Day and he and Charley sat on the Kaveney family’s float in the parade in St Peter.

The 2012 Chouanard family Easter was at Ron’s house. Chuck was still vigorous enough to ride an ATV around the farm (and to be teased by his family about the geeky safety goggle he wore while doing so).

On Friday, June 15th 2012 Chuck had been out to lunch with brother Dan and in general he seemed in good form for his condition. Later that evening Jane and Maggie Chouanard came out to visit and found him with great abdominal pain. An ambulance was called. True to Chuck’s nature about suppressing the pain he was in, when the ambulance crew arrived he greeted them casually as if they stopped by to chat. He was found to have pancreatits and blood clots in his lungs. In the early hours of Saturday Immanuel St Joseph’s Hospital Chuck suffered a major life-threatening seizure. He was moved to ICU, heavily sedated, paralized and put on a respirator. His blood pressure dropped so low they thought that he might not survive. Again Chuck pulled out of a near-death experience. His vital signs improved by Sunday. By Monday they took him off the respirator. He remained in ICU until Sunday, 24 June. Charley stayed at the hospital around the clock and was brought sustenance and support by Jane and Ron Chouanard and many other friends and relatives. After another 4(?) days his situation improved enough that he was transferred to the Benedictine Center in St Peter.

On Saturday, 7 July 2012 with Chuck at the Benedictine Center in St Peter, his family and some friends gathered at his house to take care of a number of projects that required attention. They outfitted a room across the hall from his bedroom to handle a hospital bed to make hospice care easier, they performed a number of cleaning chores and they did a variety of yard and garden projects.

On Thursday July 12th, Chuck was transferred home from the Benedictine Center. He sat up in the living room for a while and visited.

On Friday evening his situation continued to decline and all his siblings were called.

On Saturday, July 14th at 2:20pm with Charley, Tyler and Andrey at his side, all his siblings and his parents circling the room, Chuck passed away. After a few minutes Cindy cued the assembly and they said the Our Father. Charley stayed devotedly at Chuck’s side as the immediate family members exited the room and other friends and relatives entered for a final farewell.  The crowd of almost 30 made their way into the garage. With a mild suggestion from Bobby Kaveney, Chuck’s great friend, Dan Hilligoss, went to his truck a brought out a bottle of Jameson. Dan and Chuck had enjoyed a drink of Jameson on occasion. It seemed a fitting toast. Dan’s bottle was poured out in over 20 cups and distributed. The circle held up their cups and toasted, “To Chuck, Rest in Peace”.

Chuck was a great man with great attributes that can be counted by the number of friends that he made. Chuck we love you and you will be sorely missed; thanks for the time we had with you and the memories you gave us.

Chuck was a reserved, modest guy. He didn’t feel comfortable with praise or accolades. If this were read to him he would probably blush. Then he would probably deflect the praise by saying, “You’re so full of it, you’re eyes are brown.”