Charles Joseph Mihelic: A Life in Outline

It is with a heavy heart that we must share with the world the passing of Charles Joseph Mihelic, MD. On the second of this month, after a short illness, he slipped the confines of this mortal coil to challenge the deities of all canons to fistfights and matches of wits. We wish him well on his quest, but there are many here who mourn him. We have called him by many names: Joey, Chuck, Babe, Dad, ToeToe - maybe even Chas at a point in the 70s but a lot of things happened during the seventies that not everyone remembers. But we do know that in the seventies he met the love of his life on an April Day in a small town in Alaska. With her, Mary Douglass Bowman, he lived a life that would be hard to contain between the covers of a book, let alone be done justice within the limitations of this mournful missive. Any roll call of the lives he touched would be incomplete as he lived a life of service to the communities he lived in, seeing people sometimes in the worst day of their lives and using his training and native intelligence to save lives and try to mend what was broken. We can note those with holes in their hearts never again to be filled. Mary, with her constant companion gone. John Patrick Mihelic, a little brother now without his boyhood protector. Children Amanda Marie, Catherine Ann, John Edgar, and Norman Joseph left with only their memories. Grandchildren Bonnie, Joe, and Lilly for whom he will live through our stories. (Integrate this better w/ spouses and married names w/r/t genre conventions and those who proceeded in death).

We mourn Doctor Mihelic because of these stories. We mourn a man who saw the world as it was and tried to create a new reality around him. He did things his way. He did this in part because he had to. Born in the South End of Saint Joseph, Missouri, options were limited. You could work at the slaughterhouses, or you can seek your story in the wider world. His ticket was the military, signing up to serve his country in 1969.