Charlie and COMMON

It has become abundantly clear to me that Charlie was universally respected and revered throughout the COMMON Community.

A post on LinkedIn about his passing has garnered vast numbers of remembrances, all positive.

For those of you who don't remember Charlie as a mainstay of COMMON, he volunteered for 33 years and did pretty much everything from session manager to President. In my COMMON career he was one of those who moved me along in volunteering. Partly because of Charlie, I now have 25 years of volunteering including many, though not all, of the positions that Charlie did. I also don't have the cool hat. :-)

Charlie was also the guy who trained me how to pronounce things. Things like PGM were 'pigem' for example.

I never really paid close attention to the wide range of sessions he did. He authored more than 50, and while he was very well known for sessions in development, especially RPG, he also did session on PTFs for example!

I traded notes with Frank Soltis about the news and his comment was that he couldn't remember a conference where Charlie wasn't an imposing presence. He even remembered at Sound off that when Charlie got to the mic it was 'whaddaya got Charlie, let us have it.' :-)

For those of you attending POWERUp! in New Orleans in just over a week, and we hope MANY of you do, we will be remembering Charlie. Be sure to pick up a ribbon remembering him, you can guess what's on it and it's in his favorite color too. We're also trying to get some informal gatherings to remember him and we'll be making that known as organized!

Thank you all,
Larry Bolhuis
Immediate Past President, COMMON