Charles Wesley (Chuck) Mueller

Charles Wesley (Chuck) Mueller, age 83, of Grants Pass, died Monday, February 13, 2017, at Royale Gardens Health & Rehabilitation Center after a battle with colon and liver cancer and dementia.

A memorial service will be at 2:00 p.m., Saturday, February 18, 2017, at Hull & Hull Funeral Directors. Ashes will be scattered later in a private ceremony. Please sign the family guest book at www.since1928hull.com.

In lieu of flowers, tax-deductible donations may be made to the Grants Pass Lions Club, PO Box 6, Grants Pass OR 97528, or to the College of Education, c/o Eastern Washington University Foundation, 102 Hargreaves Hall, Cheney, WA 99004.

He was born May 11, 1933, in Los Angeles California, as the fourth child of Ernest and Aileen Mueller. His family moved to Kennewick, Washington, when Chuck was one. Growing up during the Great Depression, he worked at many jobs from cutting asparagus and picking fruit to flipping burgers at Bye’s Burgers. While attending high school in Kennewick, Chuck was on the football team. After graduation, he was drafted into the U.S. Army. He served in the Korean War, posted to the U.S. areas and territories, including Alaska, not yet a state. He gained the rank of corporal and earned the National Defense Service Medal and a Good Conduct Medal. In 1953, he married; he and his first wife had three daughters before divorcing. In 1959, he married Anne Stephens; they had a son (Mark) before divorcing. In 1966, he married Marie Saunders; together they have a daughter (Delia).

Chuck completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education at Eastern Washington University (then a state college) where he was on the swim team, worked 32 hours a week at a grocery store in Spokane, and finish his bachelor’s in three years. He taught for 32 years in Washington (Colfax and Cathlamet), California (Santa Clara/San Jose and Miranda/Garberville), and Oregon (Grants Pass). Although he taught every grade from third through high school, his favorites were fourth and fifth, which he taught at Highland Elementary in Grants Pass, from 1965 to 1991.

Throughout his life, chuck was an avid athlete and sportsman. He enjoyed hunting deer, elk, and game birds; fishing for trout, steelhead, bass, and salmon; skiing - both cross-country and downhill; sea kayaking; hiking; swimming and exercising at the YMCA; rafting the Wild Sections of the Rogue and Salmon Rivers and more. Chuck was a member and officer in the Grants Pass Lions Club. He also was an active member and officer of the Grants Pass Nordic Ski Club, the YMCA, and Highland Elementary PTA. Chuck enjoyed his time with the Relics Baseball Team; and acted as an ex-officio member of Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society and Delta Kappa Gamma Society as he traveled to his wife's conventions. He was an active member of the Highland Elementary Education Association, Oregon Education Association, and the National Education Association, and he held a journeyman’s card in the Retail Clerks International Assoc.

Chuck thoroughly enjoyed traveling by car throughout the West and by plane to the East Coast and Asia where son Mark proved to be a wonderful guide. He loved gardening, a skill he inherited from his father (along with a knack for plumbing and carpentry), and maintained a large and productive vegetable and fruit garden, as well as an extensively landscaped yard. Chuck shared garden produce with family and friends.

Chuck was preceded in death by his sister Betty and brother Roy, and by his parents. He is survived by Marie, his wife of 50 years, and son Mark, daughter Delia (Richard), grandchildren Maya and Richard, and sister Ernestine Miller.