Charles Strong 1939 - 2025

Charles William Strong, born in 1939 in Coquille, Oregon, has died, following a short illness. Charles was a talented linguist, a polymath, a gifted artist, gardener, travel-lover, foodie,  and a noteworthy curmudgeon. 

Known as "Kayo" by his family, Charles became a first-generation college student and later a professor of English at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. There, he engaged enthusiastically and zestfully in numerous feuds with other faculty members. He enlivened his work hours by writing an anonymous magazine about the department, filled with scurrilous (and humorous) allegations, which he surreptitiously left in the department office.  Charles' students studied literature, writing, and film,  and Charles enjoyed telling them, for instance, that "syphilis" is objectively a lovely word. 

Charles was passionate about languages. He learned French, Spanish, Italian, ancient Greek, and Chinese. He enjoyed using his languages when he traveled; in the past few decades, he often traveled with his wife, Kathy, to Byron Society meetings. 

Throughout much of his life, he ate adventurously, and often cooked elaborate dishes, frequently to the annoyance of his family, since the meals he planned inevitably took far longer to complete than expected, and were usually served three or four hours after the announced mealtime. Charles also regularly alarmed his family using unusual ingredients, including a black corn fungus (huitlacoche) and caul fat (a cow's abdominal lining). On less elaborate occasions, he loved a good salami-onion-and-mustard sandwich, ideally served with an ice-cold beer.

Charles enjoyed a variety of handicrafts. A self-taught pianist, he constructed a clavichord. He also rebuilt the porch of a Victorian farmhouse. Sometimes, planning was a stumbling block for him; "analysis paralysis" — his term for procrastinating on starting a project by spending an excess of time on preliminary steps — reduced the number of projects he completed. Charles was nevertheless a gifted artist who produced works in watercolor, plaster, and other media. On one occasion, he created a realistic cardboard model of the Globe Theatre in London, earning an "A" for one of his children on the project. After retirement, Charles moved to McMinnville, Oregon, where he opened his art studio to the public as part of the Yamhill County Arts Alliance open studio art tour. 

Never one to take the path more well-trodden, Charles taught himself to type using the American Simplified Keyboard instead of the standard QWERTY keyboard, and taught his children to do so as well. He also was an early adopter of home computers, having become the owner of a "portable" IBM weighing about 40 pounds, with the awesome total of 256K of memory. He assembled a small "Magnatrac" tractor from a kit and, at one point, had a darkroom for developing photographs. He also dabbled at different times in constructing electronics and bookbinding. When his kids were young, Charles created elaborate Easter-egg hunts for them with clever clues, some of which were so arcane that the stale candy was discovered in its hiding place months or years later. 

Charles loved cats, tweedy academic jackets, cowboy boots, and convertibles. He liked to sing Western songs and wrote an unpublished western novel. He was a fan of James Garner and enjoyed watching "The Rockford Files," but for some reason disliked Alan Alda. In the heyday of boxing, he would stay up late and watch big matches with one of his twin daughters.  

Charles had an opinion on everything and was always willing to share it. He hated anything "cute" and often quoted his grandmother who had commented, in a lovely Southern drawl, "When I see something cute, I want to spit on it."  

Like many in the family, Charles knew how to tell a great story. Once in Australia, he met a kid selling lemonade. As Charles considered buying a cup, the kid took a sip of his own wares. Allegedly, the kid then commented that when the lemonade was too cold, the solution was to swish it around and spit it back into the cup. He demonstrated and then poured his cup back into the pitcher. Charles decided not to buy any of the lemonade.  

Charles designed his garden to encourage backyard wildlife. Feeding the birds and the squirrels and watching their antics remained one of his favorite daily activities.

He is survived by his wife, Kathy; and will be missed by family and friends alike.