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CHUCK LEWIS: DREAM CHASER
Chuck Lewis was a dream chaser and still sees no end to it. He has traveled and
explored all of North America from Mexico to Alaska and from the Atlantic to the
Pacific. His family lived in Alaska Territory before it was a state, and Chuck
homesteaded 160 acres there and has had a taste of farm and ranch work and
owning horses. He was always too sugar-footed to stay in one place, however, and
hit the trail early in life. As a homeless drifter he lived on the Navajo
reservation in Arizona; lived with a uranium prospector in New Mexico; was an
unsuccessful truck driver; was a trained certified psychiatric aide; was a
published cartographer (map-maker); was a genealogist; played guitar and sang
with a country band; and enjoyed a brief career as a movie extra in Hollywood. He has tried painting in oils,
sculpturing, and has been a very successful photographer. He discovered
Arizona in 1956 and knew he'd found his real home, but still found dreams to
chase. He has seen a lot of death, but has also helped deliver several babies,
including one of his own daughters on a table spread with newspapers in a log house in
the desert in 1960. Chuck has known real-life old pioneers, guides, and
gunfighters, and he's a life-long hunter and shooter. He is also a U.S. Army
veteran.
He was run over and crushed under the wheels of an
automobile when a young boy, has been stabbed once as an adult, and in the
summer of 2000 had three heart attacks in 18 hours. He insisted on being awake
so he could watch on TV monitors as surgeons put a steel mesh stent in his heart,
then he left the hospital the next morning and went on with his life. Four years
later in 2004 a simple ankle injury almost cost him his life when blood clots
formed, went up his leg, hit his heart and went through into his lungs. It is a
fact that 95% of such pulmonary embolisms cause almost instant death within 30 minutes,
but it wasn't Chuck's time to go yet.
Chuck is old fashioned and stubborn regarding his
unequivocal sense of honesty and integrity, and wastes little time on those
lacking the same qualities. His personal code of ethics has always been easily
apparent to anyone who has ever dealt with him. Also, if you have no sense of
humor you'll never understand him.
His private home library is inventoried at almost 3,400
volumes, all dealing with American history and firearms. Back in 1968, Chuck and
a close friend from North Dakota, Howard Hoovestol, author of E. Remington
& Sons, Cartridges (2000), sought out and found a significant lost
historical site relating to early American expeditions along Arizona's Gila
River. Their find later prompted an article to be written by a local historian
for the journals of the Arizona Historical Society.
In the latter part of 2000, Chuck became involved in
another interesting project of special meaning. The late Russell Annabel was a
noted outdoor adventure writer who, among other things, did a lot of sensitive
work for the military during World War II, and later wrote regularly for Sports
Afield magazine. He died in 1979 and was worthy of a biography of his own.
Jeff Davis, a writer from Beaverton, Oregon, has composed exactly that.
Annabel's life was well intertwined with Tex Cobb (1872-1962), the legendary
Alaska pioneer, guide, and former Texas cowboy and gunfighter. Chuck had been a
friend of Cobb's in Alaska, and he was able to contribute unique personal Tex
Cobb photos and anecdotes that appear with his credit in Davis's book, Return
to Toonaklut (Safari Press, 2002).
Chuck's formal education is limited to an Associate
in Arts degree from Phoenix Community College several decades ago, thanks only
to the old G.I. Bill. His "normal" job, once he was
domesticated, was in the illustrating, mapping, and engineering support
disciplines, working in field offices for the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs and
the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. He retired in 1991 as a branch chief with 33
years of government service, all in Arizona.
Over the years Chuck has written the words and music
for twenty-six songs; has written a book of poetry, Love and Dandelions: A
life of Rhyme (1991; reprinted 2004); and an examination of Arthurian literature from
the year 500 AD to the present entitled The Twisted Roots of King Arthur's
Family Tree (1991). Chuck laughs at how little interest that book
generated. That book has since been converted to a See-Dee.
In recent years he has written exclusively of the
west. He was a
non-fiction literary reviewer and contributing editor for True West
magazine from 2002 through December, 2008, and is a member of the True West
Historical Society. He's also a member of the Western Writers of America and is
the author of When Good
Men Ride (2001), Two From the
West (2003), The Western Film Review, Volume One (2004), A Certain Justice (2004),
The Reprobates (2005), and Beyond the Big River (2006). He also
has six See-Dees available: the above noted Twisted Roots (2001), These Ain't Colts! (2003), Remembering My West
(2003), Life With a Gun on His Hip (2003), Well, Picture That! (2005), and Barton Sleigh Bells (2005).
Chuck is also an historical researcher and consultant for other writers,
editors, and western fans, and is a moderator for two western history forums. He is always working
on a new project of some kind.
In spite of all his varied interests and experiences,
Chuck says the best thing that ever happened to him was his marriage in the
spring of 1958 to his wife Pat, who is his closest friend and true soul mate. They reside in Wickenburg, Arizona, and have a son and two daughters, and five
grandchildren, all Arizonans.
And he's still finding dreams to chase ...
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