CHARLES WAYNE WETZEL
August 4, 1942 ~ February 3, 2010

The year was 1942. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was serving an unprecedented third term as President of these United States. The nation was just weeks into World War Two. War had been declared on Japan on December 10, 1941 after their bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, and on Germany and Italy on December 11. The names “Adolph Hitler”, “Benito Mussolini”, “Tojo” and “Hirohito” were on everyone’s lips. It was a tumultuous time.

Meanwhile, in the peaceful little country community of Hainesville down in Wood County, Texas, just 9 miles from Mineola and 8 miles from Quitman, the County seat. The new year had found Buddie and Katie Wetzel living on Mr. Julius Puckett’s place where Buddie made his living by farming. Buddie was 43 years old (born August 30, 1898), and his wife, Katie, was 38 (born September 13, 1903). She had just found out that she was “expecting” again. This would be their fifth child, who should be born about the end of July or the first part of August.

When Charles was born on August 4, they had been married 22 years (March 25, 1920) and already had four children, all boys. R. C. turned 16 that year on January 9 (born 1926), and had graduated from Mineola High School on May 26 (1942).  Billy was 11 on May 1 (born 1931), Tommy had just turned 8 the past October 24 (born 1933), and James Owen had just celebrated his second birthday on December 18 (born 1940), a toddler who was doted on by his mom, dad and three older brothers.

On Tuesday, August 4 (1942), mom went into labor. A call was made to Dr. White in Mineola. They sent me, Billy and Tommy out to the pea patch to pick peas and get us out of the way. We were near the road and saw the doctor’s car when he came. He stopped and asked us where the Wetzels lived. Then he delivered the baby. It was another boy! He charged daddy $25.00 for his services and left. We ran to the house. Everyone was happy and excited, because the new baby was the spittin’ image of his daddy! His hair was red, and so curly you couldn’t tell which end was growing from his head.  That’s why he was about four years old before mom would let daddy give him his first haircut.

I still have some of the photographs which immortalized him with the camera.  There he is – all dressed up in a frilly little dress, a bow in his red curly locks – mama’s little girl! She had wanted a daughter so bad! She sent me the pictures while I was overseas in the Navy, and everybody on the ship said, “Oh, what a pretty little sister you have!” So Charles had to grow up tough, like Johnny Cash’s boy named “Sue”. But later, everyone finally had to accept the fact that he was indeed a boy.

In 1943, right after Charles’ first birthday, I left the home. I went to Fort Worth and lived with Uncle Ross and Aunt Emily, taking a job with Montgomery Ward stocking shoes for their catalogue sales, earning a whopping $18 a week. I would ride the Greyhound bus home almost every weekend, so I kept in close touch with my family. Usually I would have something for the kids. I bought their first radio, and one weekend I brought two bikes home on the bus. Another time, rods and reels to fish with in the creek. I was the “big” brother, who loved my brothers, and was loved by them.

In March of 1944, when Charles was just 19 months old, I was drafted into the US Navy and sent to Farragut, Idaho. I was immediately a hero to my brothers in my Navy uniform. I came back home on leave after boot camp, and again on my way to Radio School at the University of Colorado at Boulder on delayed orders. And then again when I finished school that fall. I reported for duty at the Alameda Naval Air Station at Alameda, California, but kept in touch with the family by writing letters every day.

One day I received orders that I would be going overseas. The family was very worried and concerned about my welfare, but they were proud that I was serving my country. After a couple of years, the war was over and I returned home from Philadelphia, where my ship had joined the mothball fleet. Charles was nearly four when I was discharged in June, 1946. By that time, I was a newlywed. Rita and I had married on June 24, 1946. By the time Charles was five, he was already an uncle!

In the fall of 1947, dad went to Dallas and took a job with Bill Trice who had opened up a carpet business. He stayed with me and Rita and worked laying carpet. On March 3, 1948, he moved the family to the Twin Airports area of Grand Prairie.  Charles was 5 ½ years old at the time. Dad and mom began attending Calvary Baptist Church in Grand Prairie, and joined on April 10, 1949.

On September 13, 1949, right after Charles’ seventh birthday, and on mom’s forty-sixth birthday, the family moved into their “new” home at 320 S. E. 10^th Street in Grand Prairie. They lived in this home until dad’s death on January 5, 1979, and mom’s death on April 27, 1994.

On January 8, 1960, when Charles was 17 years and 5 months old, he and Linda Sue Toles were married, 13 days before her 16^th birthday. Taking a day off from school, they went down to Texarkana where they were married. They didn’t tell anyone. Some time later they were at Linda’s house and her mother caught them in a “compromising position”.  They had to tell her that they were married. Linda’s parents were so upset they kicked them out!  They moved in with dad and mom and continued their schooling.

Charles and Linda had three children: Robert Charles, born September 7, 1962, John Adam, born April 14, 1965, and Janie Lynette, born July 1, 1966. On January 29, 1983, when he was 41, Charles became a grandfather for the first time, when Robert Charles Jr. was born. He now has nine grandchildren. One of them, Brittany Nicole, is in heaven since December 19, 1985.

Unfortunately, this marriage ended in divorce. Both Linda and Charles remarried.   Charles married Sandi Spurlock on February 17, 1985 at Albuquerque, New Mexico where they lived for a while.  Sandi brought a beautiful little daughter, Lindsey Erin (almost four years old; she was born March 6, 1981) into the marriage.

Most of his working life, Charles was a truck driver.  He worked over 33 years for Merchants’ Freight Lines. He and Sandi later bought a home at 4633 Elderberry Street in Garland, Texas.

I do not know the exact date that Charles accepted Christ as his personal Saviour, but the records of Calvary Baptist Church would show it. He has been active in his church since he was converted, and was attending and serving in Lavon Drive Baptist Church in Dallas, where Dr. Gary Coleman was his pastor.  He and Sandi had a rest home ministry with a large group of the elderly and infirm.  The Bethesda Ministry, which Charles oversaw.

One day Charles was driving his truck across Wyoming when he had to sneeze. When he did, he broke a rib in his left side. He could hardly see for the pain, and had difficulty breathing. When he got home, he went to the doctor, and, sure enough, a rib was broken. But the X-ray showed that another rib was missing! Upon further examination, a large tumor was discovered. A Plasmacytoma. The Doctors did a biopsy and found it was malignant. They said it was inoperable and started giving him radiation treatments. The radiation didn’t do any good, so they were forced to operate. They took out about five ribs, detaching them from his breastbone and his backbone, to make an opening large enough to remove the tumor. After a while they checked him and found out there was still some cancer in the stubs of the ribs they had cut off his backbone. They went in and removed them further. But soon they discovered cancer in his bones. They started giving him ten chemo pills a day for four days, then four days off, for twenty weeks. That didn’t do any good. He finally had to retire from truck driving and start taking direct injections of chemo.

Miracles happen, and a big one happened to Charles. He still has his cancer (April 2008), but is still able to get around OK. He rode his motorcycle and continued his rest home ministry.

The cancer finally won! Charles passed from this life to his eternal home at 11:10 AM on Wednesday, February 3, 2010. Funeral services were held at 10 AM Saturday morning, February 6, 2010 at Lavon Drive Baptist Church in Garland. Over 300 people were present, 52 of them Wetzels. His body is buried at Rockwall Cemetery. His grave marker has an engraving of a motorcycle on one corner and a Bible on the other. He lived on this earth for 67 years, 5 months and 30 days.  ~ by RC Wetzel, the elder. (edited to update the text by R.C. Wetzel, the younger)