When you reach the age of 66, as I have, you find that very few of the elders you learned from and respected as a child still survive. Fewer still continue in the same efforts they had in your youth. Then there was Chuck Myers.

Chuck helped found the American Legion Ambulance Service in 1948. I don’t recall whether he helped get my mom to the hospital when I was born, but I do know he drove the ambulance that got me to the hospital after I banged my head in an accident in 2007.

The point of the example is that in my memory, Chuck has always been there for me and everyone else around here.

Highland was a much different place in the 1950s. Without mincing words, it was a poor, isolated, community, easily comparable to visions of Appalachia. I don’t recall any two-car garages and only the boarding houses had swimming pools, but many homes still had their outhouses and woodsheds, whether they were in regular use or not. For many, hunting season was year-round, and some cellars around town still had barrels of Prohibition era, homemade apple-jack, while dust-covered slot machines rested in the occasional barn or attic.

World War II veterans like Chuck returned here after seeing the wider world and saw things that needed to be done, like the ambulance service.

The Legion began sponsoring a Christmas party for the kids, and I well remember how I looked forward to that gathering in the town hall. In those days before the hall was renovated, it still sported the warm, dark-stained pine wood interior of a school gymnasium, which it was in its former life. It seemed like the perfect place for Santa Claus’s hangout. Those parties presented some of my first encounters with Chuck, who was always the master of ceremonies. Long before I knew him by name, I knew the comforting baritone syrup of his voice.

Chuck was asked to emcee most of the civic functions that I recall, from holiday commemorations to graduations. His voice was a reassuring note of continuity as the years went by.

When he wasn’t speaking, he was the bugler, reliably blowing taps for the Legion color guard’s appearances.

Chuck was also a life-member of the Yulan Fire Department and served three years as its chief. He was always there.

When I was a teenager, Chuck’s son Bob was in my class at school, and I remember knocking on Chuck’s Eldred door, trying to recruit Bob for pick-up baseball games. More times than not, Chuck would be in his garage fixing or building something, often with Bob, who usually preferred to continue with his dad.

In the mid-60s, Chuck provided me with my first real job, in the summer at $1.35 per hour for what was then the county highway department. I believe he was the deputy, for then-Superintendent John J.J. McGough.

Chuck would eventually become commissioner of the renamed county division of public works, and I would become a newspaper reporter and sometime columnist.

Chuck had always been cordial, so I was surprised when I got an uncharacteristic frosty reception upon meeting him at one public function.

I couldn’t imagine what I’d done to make one of my heroes angry with me. He didn’t want to elaborate, but I pestered him until he did.

I had been writing a sometime satirical column on road repairs called “Pothole of the Week.” Chuck was not amused. He felt that my satire represented legal notice, which made the county liable for damages in said potholes on county roads.

Litigation was not quite as rampant in the early ‘80s as it is now, and this was something that had never occurred to me or my editor. I did my best to maintain journalistic composure, but I was really upset. I figured the county could take care of itself legally, but the idea of having Chuck Myers ticked off at me was something else. I soon lost interest in further highway reviews and the rift eventually healed.

In the late ‘90s, I was spending a lot time at my friend Diane Butler’s home, which is opposite the Myers home. Then retired, Chuck and Ruth were always doing something around the house and yard. Prior to one Independence Day, I remember Chuck with his paint cans, alternately hand-painting the highway guardrail posts: red, white and blue. They still are red, white and blue.

Chuck and Ruth would affix the American flags to power poles near the house for the holidays. The process was like something from a Norman Rockwell painting, and one year, I photographed him and Lou Pine erecting those flags. That scene won an award at the state press convention on the following spring. I always hoped that photo got me even for the pothole column.

Once I interviewed him for the newspaper about his life experiences—then 50 years on the ambulance. He was already amazing. He showed me his ambulance collection and we talked about the passing years, but I can’t say I was very happy with my resulting story. My interviewing Chuck felt like interviewing a member of my family.

Sandy Long did a much better job in May of 2013. In explaining his years of service, he told her, “I enjoy helping people, whether putting out their fires or taking them to the hospital. I’ve had the chance to hold a newborn in my arms. It’s all been my passion. I can’t say I enjoy being where people are ill or injured, but I do enjoy the fact that I’m able to help them.”

The last time I really spoke with Chuck came after the town 9/11 ceremonies in 2013. Chuck had been there with his bugle. I kidded him about his boisterous bugling—I knew he had fitted it with a recorded version of taps, as his wind then wasn’t what it was.

Ruth was then failing and would be gone by the end of the year. Several friends commented that afterwards, Chuck seemed determined to be re-united with her.

I’m sure there are many folks around these parts with similar and even better recollections about Chuck Myers. I know that others closely involved with him at those places can detail his work at the Legion ambulance, the fire department, the county, or at the Eldred Congregational Church, where he was a deacon.

In truth, I didn’t know him well; as one might usually say they know a close friend, but in the best tradition of a friend, he was always there when you needed him. He was a foundation rock for our town and a Highland without Chuck Myers is going to take some getting used to.