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"Charlie and the future grew up together. With one foot planted in the age of draft animals and diphtheria — when only 6 percent of Americans graduated from high school, and even middle-class people lived without electricity or running water — Charlie planted the other foot in the age of space stations and robotic surgery.
"He lived to be among the last surviving officers of World War II, among the last Americans who could say what it was like to drive an automobile before highways existed, among the last who felt amazement when pictures first moved on a screen. He lived from 'The Birth of a Nation' to Barack Obama. From women forbidden to vote to women running nations and corporations.
"Still, as I’ve reflected on this remarkable friend, I have come to see that he was more than a living history lesson, more than the winner of a genetic Powerball. He was one of the few children of the early 1900s who could tell my children of the 2000s how to thrive while lives and communities, work and worship, families and mores are shaken, inverted, blown up and remade...."
"...By the time he was done, he had lived nearly half the history of the United States.
"Among Charlie’s things after he was gone, his family found a single sheet of notepaper, on which Charlie had boiled 109 years into an operating code of life. He filled the sheet front and back in flowing ballpoint pen, writing in definitive commands. Among them:
"Think freely. Practice patience. Smile often. Forgive and seek forgiveness.
"Feel deeply. Tell loved ones how you feel.
"Be soft sometimes. Cry when you need to. Observe miracles." - David Von Drehle
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