Charles Lester Convis

Charles L. (Chuck) Convis passed away on January 7, 2022. He was preceded in death by his loving wife Mary Anne and son Johnny. Chuck and Mary Anne were married for 72 years and together they traveled the world, worked in many different states, and well exemplified the values, sacrifice and leadership that all have come to know as “The Greatest Generation.”

Chuck was born on a farm in North Dakota on April 21, 1926. Tragedy struck the family a few years later when his mother (Ada) and new baby brother (Gordon) died within weeks of each other. Unable to raise an infant alone, Chuck’s father (Lester) sent him off to live with his maternal grandparents where he was finally able to benefit from a traditional North Dakota upbringing. But like his ancestors, Chuck was always restless, always wanting to move on and see what was over the next horizon.

As a teenager, Chuck was able to travel with his father as they roamed the depression era Midwest in search of construction work, helping to build bases including Whiteman Air Force Base. When he was 15 he struck out on his own, hopping a train to Cheyenne, Wyoming, where he worked on a railroad mail car as he finished a high school education that had begun three schools and two states ago. After high school, he kept traveling west, eventually working in a sawmill in Washington and a fishing boat in Alaska. He returned to Seattle in 1943 at age 17, determined to join the Marines. He was turned down by several recruiting offices for being underage, and finally took the extreme measure of announcing “I’m Steve Mahoney, I just turned 18 and I want to join the Marines!” at the recruiting station in Springfield Missouri, where they happily accepted him. The truth only came out when the Navy sent word to “Charles Convis” that he had been accepted as a V5 Naval Aviator alongside other future heroes like George HW Bush. In a panic, he “confessed all” to his Basic Training Captain, expecting the brig or worse. When the Captain began his reply with “Well, son” he knew it would be all right. The Marines were proud of their youngest private and said it was Chuck’s decision to either accept the honor of flying as a navy pilot, or serving on with the men he had trained with. Chuck had waited long enough to see action, so he decided to stay. The Marines began the long process of correcting his records, but not before the men had to sail to battle at Iwo Jima. Chuck, still known to comrades as “Steve Mahoney,” served as a young forward artillery observer, Headquarters & Service Battery, 2d Battalion, 14th Marines, on what is still regarded as the deadliest battle in the history of the Marine Corps. But since his buddies never knew his real name, Chuck was unable to stay in contact with them and always felt a great debt to them, and a great sorrow to be unable to know who had survived and who had not.

After Iwo Jima he was accepted into the Navy’s V12 Officer Training Program and reported to Purdue University to study engineering. By November 1945 he decided he’d rather return to active duty and was transferred to Camp Pendleton, supervising an office while awaiting further orders. He was still waiting the following May 1946 when his commander called him in to say that he was being discharged early. What Chuck didn’t know was that his father had appealed to the North Dakota Red Cross to intercede and help his only surviving son return back to the family farm where he was greatly needed. While farming in North Dakota, Chuck also attended Minot State Teacher’s College, taking every math and engineering course they had over the next two years. He especially loved architecture and was advised that the best architecture schools were the universities in Illinois, Washington and Texas. Having already studied in the first two states, he chose the University of Texas and applied there to study for a degree in Architectural Engineering, beginning in the fall of 1948. As was his habit, a single degree could not contain his curiosity so at UT he completed an additional degree in Civil Engineering.

It was at the University of Texas that he joined Phi Kappa Tau, obtained a new red 1948 Mercury Convertible, and began a long-delayed social life. His roommate’s friend Mickey was interested in another Chuck, Chuck Inks who was then dating a Louisiana girl named Mary Anne Crawley. Mickey introduced Chuck to Mary Anne in hopes of distracting the latter from Mickey’s real object of affection, and the ruse worked. Mickey and Chuck Inks were married soon after, while Chuck and Mary Anne began a life together in 1949 that exceeded 70 years and included the Inks as their close lifelong friends. As a college senior, Chuck accepted a job offer at the new Oak Ridge Nuclear Lab in Tennessee helping to design their cooling systems. While finishing his senior year in 1951, he began to attend a murder trial by the famous Houston attorney Polk Shelton, and recalled the career advice of his longtime school mentor that he should become either a labor leader or an “honest” lawyer. Chuck and Mary Anne did not even stay for graduation exercises but left for Oak Ridge as soon as classes ended in 1951. Unfortunately the postwar boom was so pronounced that it was impossible to find housing. After living in a dark basement, with their first child due in a couple months, they decided they had to find something else, so Chuck accepted an offer (with lodging) from Humble Oil Company in Houston. It was in Houston where Chuck’s new interest in the law inspired him to enroll at the University of Houston evening law school where he took the school’s top honors. Upon completion of his degree, he decided to apply to Harvard Law School, and was accepted for the Fall 1953 Semester.

After graduation from Harvard Law in 1956, Chuck and Mary Anne (and at this point, their three children, Johnny, Charles and Margaret) moved to San Diego to work for a law firm. Son Jim was born in 1957, but unfortunately tragedy struck when eldest son Johnny died of measles shortly after Jim’s birth. Chuck and Mary Anne then moved to San Rafael, CA in 1957, where both Bill and David were born. It was in San Rafael that the Convis’s lifelong friendship with the Chase family began after the tragic early death of the Chase family father. Chuck had also become involved in the Boy Scouts as a scoutmaster, sharing his love and knowledge of the outdoors with hundreds of suburban kids and later training other scoutmasters. Chuck was passionately committed to racial equity and civil rights, reaching out and including many different cultures in his scouting work, and challenging prejudice and hypocrisy wherever he encountered it, youth or adult. This was uncommon in the fifties and for his leadership he was awarded scouting’s highest honor in 1969.

Chuck’s love of architecture and building expressed itself throughout his life. In 1966 Chuck and Mary Anne did an extensive remodel to their Marin County Eichler home that landed it as a featured article in the pages of American Home magazine. He’d also bought 20 acres of remote forest in the Sierra Nevada to build a homestead cabin from local rocks, which soon became the family’s summer home. In 1972 he fulfilled a lifelong love of dogs and horses by moving the family to 100 acres of raw land near Redding CA, in order to build a working ranch, home and barns for raising quarter horses, cattle, sheep and dogs in the shadows of California’s majestic Mount Shasta. Later he would pick up a small lot near Bear Valley, California, where the entire family pitched in to build a larger mountain home, which soon became a favorite annual gathering spot for family reunions.

Educating youth about justice and fairness had become a central passion and in 1976 Chuck accepted a position teaching and creating a new paralegal training program at Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas. Chuck also finished a PhD in Psychology at the University of Texas, capping off a passion for education that had spanned 34 years, six universities and six degrees. Chuck’s teaching career continued in Pittsburgh at Duquesne University in 1982.

In 1984 Chuck and Mary Anne returned to California to finish his law career as an Assistant District Attorney for San Joaquin County. In 1995 he retired to Carson City, Nevada, where he and Mary Anne lived until 2018. In Carson City, Chuck began a new venture of writing about the West. His lifelong love of ranching and the cowboy life led him to create Pioneer Press and author an extensive series of historical books called “True Tales of the Old West."

In 2018, Chuck and Mary Anne relocated back to California to be closer to family.

An avid backpacker and hiker, Chuck also became a marathon runner late in life, taking many firsts for his age group.

Chuck is survived by a large and loving family: children and in-laws Charles Convis, Jr. (Betsy), Margaret Convis Kadoyama (Bob), Jim Convis (Joy), Bill Convis (Sally), and David Convis (Christina); and 16 grandchildren, as well as a close circle of lifelong friends.

A Celebration of Life for both Chuck and Mary Anne will be held on Saturday, June 18, 2022 at 11:00 am at the Carson City First United Methodist Church, 200 N. Division Street in Carson City. Inurnment will be at Arlington National Cemetery at a later date. Friends and loved ones can contribute to a digital memorial at https://obituaries.neptune-society.com/obituaries/sacramento-ca/charles-convis-10529531

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to your local Veterans Association or the Southern Poverty Law Center. Or better yet, take your dog for a walk and enjoy all of God’s wonderful creation, as Chuck did every day.