Charles McMaster Eesley

Charles McMaster Eesley was born 17 February 1947 at White Cross Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, to Will Eesley the architect and Peggy McMaster Eesley — the third of their four children and their only son. He served in the U.S. Army from 1969 to 1971 — a Vietnam veteran — and his time in Saigon never left him. He took his economics degree at Marietta College, worked in sales and human resources at Sears, then turned to finance: stockbroker first for The Ohio Company and later for Hazlett, Burt & Watson.

The autobiography

The single longest piece of Charlie’s own voice in this archive is “My Mother’s Favorite Son” — the 17-page autobiography he typed for his 12th-grade English class at Marietta High School in c. 1964–1965, dedicated “to my parents who have made this autobiography a happy one.” It opens with the family history of the Eesley and McMaster grandparents, then the difficult birth (“I was a mess!” — born with a club left foot, a hernia, and a face he scratched bloody so badly the doctors were worried about his eyes), the Columbus-to-Marietta move at age three, the architect-father’s eight-year remodel of the house at 651 Sixth Street, the Marietta paper routes Charlie ran for four years, the stock market that became his lifelong interest, the cross-country running silver and gold medals, DeMolay, the looming Marietta College career. The autobiography is the earliest sustained piece of his voice in the archive — three years before the 13 December 1968 letter to Terrie, five years before the Vietnam letters, fifty years before Chuck’s eulogy.

The Annapolis years and the 1983 return to Marietta

After his June 1971 ETS from the U.S. Army, Charlie and Terrie settled on the east coast — in the Annapolis, Maryland area — where Charlie worked at Sears in the years that followed. Chuck was born there; the Annapolis household carried the family’s first decade of married life.

The earliest documentary frame of the Annapolis house in this archive is a summer-afternoon snapshot of toddler Chuck on a red Radio Flyer tricycle in its driveway, c. 1981–83 — the two-story red-clapboard colonial with a covered front porch and a brick first floor that anchored the Maryland years. See the artifact page.

The family moved back to Marietta in 1983, to 137 Hillcrest Drive — on the same street as Chuck’s Aunt Betty (Davis) Wolfe and Uncle Norm Wolfe at 108 Hillcrest Drive, a few houses down. A winter exterior of the Hillcrest house, from Charlie’s own album, is the one surviving frame of it in this archive. Chuck was three years old. The Hillcrest proximity to Betty and Norm anchored the next chapter of his childhood: the holiday-host household down the street that the 108 Hillcrest place page describes.

The family later moved to Highland Ridge Road in Lowell — the house Will the architect had designed and built. For most of Chuck’s childhood the family lived on Highland Ridge Road, in a house Will had designed, with the orchard Will had planted, the small red bridge Will had originally built, a pond out back that froze hard enough to walk on if you were lucky and not if you weren’t, and the Arnolds — John and Peggy — a hundred yards away as the nearest neighbors and a thousand times closer than that in practice. The tractor he flipped over on himself once. John Arnold helped him up.

He was a longtime, active member of First Congregational United Church of Christ in Marietta, where he served on boards and helped manage the endowment. He read the Civil War. He read Vietnam. He read the financial pages. He believed strongly in the responsibility of voting. He remarried, to Diana Hoffer Eesley, in 1999. He died November 26, 2015 at sixty-eight, in Marietta.

Vietnam, 1969–1971

The Army tour is the period his life turned on. He shipped to Saigon in 1969, twenty-two years old, and rotated out in 1971. He never went back. He never wanted to. His son’s eulogy names it directly: “most long conversations with dad would wind their way eventually back to what he experienced in Vietnam from 69–71.”

The letters he wrote home from Saigon survived the trip back to Marietta. Most of them went to Terrie Lee Wildermuth, his then-girlfriend and future wife — the two of them already a couple before he shipped; a smaller set went to his parents Will and Peggy. They are the period record on his side of those two years — what he was telling Terrie and his parents in real time, before any of it had become the thing he carried for the rest of his life. The letters are catalogued in this archive as the Letters from Vietnam collection: a curated set of five-to-seven letters published in full; the rest catalogued by metadata only, with the body held in the private family archive. The collection page states the curation principle and points to the individual letters as they are added.

A few of the things this layer carries that the rest of the page does not: the stereo and record player that was the first thing he bought when he got back, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones as the music of the year of his life he had been living through, the “smart-ass comments that probably nearly got him court-marshaled” he kept making across the rest of his life, the Skype call decades later when Chuck was visiting Saigon and Charlie, on the other end, declined to come.

A color photograph of him home from the tour, c. 1971 sits in this archive — Charlie in his Army officer’s wool overcoat, smiling broadly in front of a wall of leather-bound volumes at his parents’ Sixth Street house, with a hand visible at the left edge raising a drink to him in welcome. Terrie captioned the print years later in red felt-tip: “RETURNING FROM VIETNAM — CHARLIE CIRCA 1972 EESLEY”.

The long tail of the war — Agent Orange, diabetes, and the forced retirement

The Vietnam letters carry a confirmed September 1970 malaria episode at a Vietnam hospital, followed by convalescence at the U.S. military’s 6th Convalescent Center at Cam Ranh Bay. The malaria recovered. The deeper exposure didn’t.

Charlie served with the 101st Airborne in I Corps in 1969 to 1971 — exactly the unit, area, and time the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs uses to apply the “boots on the ground” presumption for Agent Orange exposure. American forces sprayed millions of gallons of the herbicide across South Vietnam through Operation Ranch Hand from 1962 to 1971; the 101st operated in heavily-defoliated mountain areas including the A Shau Valley. Direct exposure was almost certain.

Years later he developed Type 2 diabetes, one of the diseases the VA presumes was caused by Agent Orange exposure in service members who served in Vietnam between 1962 and 1975. The diabetes progressed along the classic three-complication path: diabetic retinopathy took his vision slowly, forcing him to retire early from his stockbroker career; peripheral neuropathy (itself separately on the VA Agent Orange presumptive list) ran in parallel; and the peripheral vascular complications eventually contributed to the foot amputation the eulogy refers to (“the late comment about losing weight in the form of his foot”). The VA awarded him a 100% disability rating.

The line about losing weight in the form of his foot — the dark joke about something he had no control over — is the same dry, smart-ass voice his Vietnam letters carry through the field and his autobiography carries at seventeen. The disease was Agent Orange; the voice was Charlie.

His father-in-law Robert Earl Wildermuth had also developed diabetes (likely Type 2 as well, and not Agent Orange related given Robert Earl’s earlier Pacific and Korean service, though he did not serve in Vietnam). Robert Earl’s 1989 memoir addresses the next generation directly: “to anyone of my progeny that I may have passed the diabetic gene onto, have faith for diabetes can be lived with if certain care is taken.” Charlie’s diabetes joined his father-in-law’s as the disease running through the family on both sides of Chuck’s maternal-and-paternal medical history.

The wedding photograph

The wedding is the resolution of the Letters from Vietnam: the two of them married after the courtship-during-a-war that the letters had been. Two frames survive. The bride-and-groom couple portrait — Terrie in veil and gown, Charlie in a black tuxedo, a period sedan at the edge of the frame — is the day from the couple’s own side; the companion frame of Will and Peggy mid-laugh on the church steps is the day from the parents-of-the-groom’s side.

The eulogy

The fullest portrait of him by far is the eulogy Chuck delivered at the memorial service. It is the most personal document in this archive in Chuck’s own voice and stands in the documents collection as itself a piece of the family record:

Read “Eulogy for Charles McMaster Eesley” (by Chuck Eesley, 2015)

A few of the things that page carries that the obituary’s prose does not: the pond, the dance Charlie suggested down the empty aisle of the Parkersburg–Cleveland leg, the firework that went into the pine tree, the stereo as the first thing Charlie bought when he came home from Vietnam, the CDs Chuck “stole” for college and then gave away to his cousin Nooreen Rubin, the late comment about losing weight in the form of his foot, the Hemingway line Chuck closed on: “Everyone is broken by life, but afterward many are strong in the broken places.”

The places Chuck named at the end of the eulogy — the track at Marietta Middle School, the house on Highland Ridge, Grandma Peggy’s house at 424 N 7th Street, any TV that can pull up CNBC — are the places that should hold his name longest.

Biographical summary above draws on his published obituary at Cawley & Peoples Funeral Home; the rest of the page comes from Chuck’s eulogy.

From his obituary

Charlie’s obituary, published by Cawley & Peoples Funeral Homes, gathers the public shape of his life. He was a Vietnam veteran, having served with the U.S. Army from 1969 to 1971, and a member of American Legion Post 64. He took his economics degree at Marietta College, worked in sales and human resources at Sears, then became a stockbroker for The Ohio Company and later Hazlett, Burt & Watson. He was an “active, long-standing member of First Congregational United Church of Christ,” where he served on boards and helped manage the church’s endowment funds.

Two lines of it are pure Charlie. He “enjoyed studying the Civil War and military strategy.” And: “Charlie was a staunch Republican, and believed that voting is a privilege of every citizen and is important to effect change and ensure the future of the nation.”

He was survived by his wife Diana Hoffer Eesley, whom he married 9 January 1999; his son Charles E. Eesley, Ph.D., of Stanford, CA; his mother Terrie Bain, of Marietta; three sisters — Jeanne Kamiab (Joe), of Cleveland, Anne Eesley, of Muskegon, Michigan, and Margaret Eesley, of Kent; nieces Stephanie Mullin, Amena Rubin, and Nooreen Rubin; and great-nephews Cameron and Harrison Mullin.

Funeral services were held 11:00 am Saturday, 12 December 2015 at the First Congregational Church, the Rev. Linda Steelman officiating, with full military honors. The family directed memorial donations to the American Diabetes Association and the First Congregational Church Memorial Fund — the diabetes a quiet last echo of the Agent Orange exposure the rest of this page traces.

Remembrances left in the guestbook

Condolences signed on the funeral-home guestbook in the weeks after his death:

“Charlie was always so nice to me and our family. He was kind, funny, and a wonderful person. He will be missed. I have happy memories, and my prayers and love to my sister, Diana.” — Ellen Wittekind (with Dan & family), 3 December 2015

“My family was close to the Eesley family. Charley was always a friend and felt he was a brother.” — Julia Hausser Guffey, 9 December 2015

“Charlie will be greatly missed. I remember well how he would call the church office and give me a hard time, or ask ‘What’s going on at the church?’ We would have good talks when he appeared in the office. Charlie was a great guy. My deepest sympathies to you and to all the family.” — Diana Whitlatch, 8 December 2015

“Diana & family, I am so sorry to hear about your husband. May God’s peace help you through this time. Love & prayers.” — Teresa Beach (WSCC), 2 December 2015

Source: Charles McMaster Eesley obituary and guestbook, Cawley & Peoples Funeral Homes, November–December 2015.

See also

He is the middle of the three Charleses — named in 1947 for his grandfather Charles Leonard (skipping his own father Will’s first name), with McMaster for his mother Peggy’s family. He in turn named his son Charles Eric in 1979. A short essay reads the grandfather-and-grandson naming chain across the three generations.

Further reading

On the war that came home with him:

• The Vietnam War (Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, 2017) — the same documentary series, ten-part — alongside the Ken Burns Roosevelts Chuck referenced at the end of the eulogy.
• Dispatches by Michael Herr — the war as it sounded.
• Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes — the war as it felt.
• The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund and its searchable wall directory — for the names of those who didn’t come home from Charlie’s years (1969–71).

See also — family threads

Charlie is an anchor for four of the ten threads in the Family threads synthesis essay:

• Thread #5 — Service, stewardship, and giving — Vietnam veteran (1969–1971); First Congregational UCC board and endowment management; “believed strongly in the responsibility of voting.”
• Thread #6 — Humor as transmitted inheritance — the “smart-ass comments that probably nearly got him court-martialed” in Saigon; the dry humor inherited from Peggy and diluted into Chuck.
• Thread #7 — Showing up in small, daily, unglamorous ways — visited Peggy at Harmar Place every day after work in her final stretch.
• Thread #9 — Crossing for what’s next — the Saigon crossing of 1969 is the Letters from Vietnam corpus’s whole frame; the courtship with Terrie ran across that ocean for two years.