One of the hardest thing for me to say, my best friend and family member Chuck Tye passed on May 13 2026.
Chuck is a retired Marine who I met when he moved to Washington. He was trying to build up Project Healing Waters groups here in the Pacific Northwest. I first met him talking to my Red Cross fly tying group in Madigan about Chuck having them combine my group with PHWFF. He got both the Madigan and Seattle VA groups to merge into PHWFF and the rest was history. I stayed on as a volunteer in the NW Region PHWFF into the new JBLM group. Chuck got so much done, in such a quick time, to get the new group set up and running into a better area to see more wounded military. I was amazed what he did.
I soon started doing my thing. I taught fly tying and got word out about Chuck's new group. I know he wasn't sure about me at first. I wasn't able to join the military. So I think he was curious what I was here. As I would help every week and started helping set up our first trips, he understood that I was there to help and put my time in to help. I was always the first one to help figure out trips to do. We even would do recon trips for events like the 2 Fly. We became really close friends. He loved having his private time, but started inviting me to his personal fishing trips. Even when we both walked away from PHWFF we still fished together. My first fishing trip from retiring from UPS was fishing up on the Yakima River with Chuck.
To say my Chuck is my friend doesn'tcover it, he's my family. I would see him once a week to have a coffee followed with a whiskey. Even up until the end I would visit him when he felt strong enough. Though at the end we would just talk and end with a whiskey.
I love you my friend. You're now fishing the Holy Waters fishing with some great people already there. I will miss you, but glad you're no longer in pain.
....what Paige said....
