CHARLES
WAYNE CASH, SR.
12/28/33 - 12/4/24
HONORS
Military Honors
Veterans of Foreign Wars Tahoma National Cemetery
GATHERING
Song
“Ave Maria, D839”
Franz Schubert, Luciano Pavarotti, NPO
RELEASING
Commendation and Thanksgiving
Rev. Katie Klosterman
Words of Appreciation
On behalf of Charlie’s family, we are grateful that you have joined us for Charlie’s military burial at the Tahoma National Cemetery. Following the service, please join us for a reception:
Maynard’s 2251 NW Bucklin Hill Rd, Silverdale, WA 98383 16:00-19:00
Charles Cash Obituary
December 28, 1933 – December 4, 2024
Silverdale, Washington
Charles Wayne Cash, retired naval Command Master Chief, entrepreneur, investor, avid traveler, amateur historian, alien enthusiast, yard work aficionado, husband, father, grand-father and great father, died on Wednesday, December 4, 2024, at the age of 90 at his home in Silverdale, Washington. He is survived by his wife, Virginia; daughter, Pamela; sons, Charles, Keith, Tom and Chris; grandchildren, Tamara, Christina, Valerie, Angela, August, Aspen, Ashley, Alba, Keanan and Finnley as well as seven great-grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his parents Fred Thomas and Rosezetta Cash, sister Maxine, brothers Arvey and Clyde, daughter Penny and grandson, Marcus.
Charles, or “Charlie” as most people knew him, was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the midst of the Great Depression. Despite being the youngest of four, he was never overshadowed by his siblings and never went without. Independent, motivated, resourceful and goal-oriented, Charlie epitomized the “work hard, play hard” ethic. These traits, paired with a natural charisma and an insatiable desire to help others, earned him a loyal following of close friends and business partners that sometimes challenged his tendency toward introversion.
Charlie grew up on a ranch just east of Owasso, Oklahoma, a suburb of Tulsa, where his parents, Fred and Rosetta Cash, raised livestock and operated a Texaco service station on the historic Route 66. Each morning, at dawn, he awoke to open the station and greet the first customers before heading to school. And then, similarly, each afternoon, following school, he returned to the station to help his mom with operations before closing the station that evening. When he wasn’t being silly and pranking customers, this responsibility taught him the value of hard work, entrepreneurship and customer service, which he applied consistently in many endeavors from real estate to potting soil (true statement) throughout his life.
In 1952, Charlie graduated Owasso High School, where among many things, he met and married Mary Miller, the sister to his life-long best friend, Paul Miller. He and Mary went on to have three healthy children, Penny, Pam and Chuck. To support their young family, Charlie postponed the engineering education he started at Oklahoma A&M University (now Oklahoma
State), in Stillwater, Oklahoma, to pursue a different adventure, the US Navy. On the 2nd of February, 1953, during the middle of winter, Charlie arrived at the US Naval Training Center in Great Lakes, Illinois, where he spent four frigid months being molded into a sailor—a sailor, who, ironically, hated being at sea so much that after his first two-year sea tour aboard the USS Shenandoah (AD-26), a destroyer tender, he chose to swap specialties from Radioman to Personnelman so that he could write his own orders and avoid ships altogether, which largely worked until it didn’t in 1970 when he was assigned to the USS Hancock (CV-19), an aircraft carrier. “I thought I’d died and gone to hell,” he’d often say when asked about the assignment, but between these tours at sea, with his family at his side, he lived the Navy’s slogan to the fullest and “saw the world,” from the Philippines to Japan and eventually, the Pacific Northwest.
On September 2nd, 1972, Charlie remarried, and with his new wife, Virginia, AKA “Ginny” (née Berryman) he settled in Silverdale, Washington, where they designed and built, amidst twelve acres of towering evergreens, the quintessential “go big or go home” A-frame—a humble five-story home with modest views west across fields of strawberries to the Hood Canal and the Olympic Mountains beyond. In this home, they made a wonderful life together and raised three boys, Keith, Tom and Chris.
Charlie retired from the Navy, after 24 years, six months of honorable service, on October 13, 1976. As he later described the decision, he gave up military gold for civilian gold, but we all knew the real reason: he was up for another sea tour. During his 24 years of service, he achieved the rank of (Command) Master Chief (PNCM/E-9) and garnered an admirable collection of awards, commendations and medals including the Navy Achievement Medal, Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal (Korea), Navy Occupation Service Medal with “Europe” clasp, National Defense Service Medal (2nd Award), Good Conduct Medal (6th Award), Navy Unit Commendation Ribbon, Vietnam Service Medal and Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal (7th Award). The record of his duty stations is similarly impressive, commencing in the Great Lakes, Illinois for basic training; Norfolk, Virginia, while assigned to the USS Shenandoah, which took him to the Caribbean and the Mediterranean; Norman, Oklahoma, for communications training; Subic Bay, the Philippines; Futema and Torii Station, Okinawa; and Marietta, Washington, with the Naval Security Group, before being assigned to
USS Hancock home-ported in Alameda, California. He spent the last five years of his service in Washington State at three commands: the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Washington; the Sandpoint Naval Air Station in Seattle, Washington; and the Undersea Warfare Center in Keyport, Washington, where he retired.
Alas, in the fall of 1976, he finally accepted the opportunity to retire, which for him, meant that he could focus on two jobs instead of three: husband/father and real estate investor. You see, Charlie was never one to remain idle. He’d been told by his father at a young age that “people die in bed,” and, consequently, spent little time in bed unless it was Sunday morning. He opted instead to “make it while you’re young,” as he called it. To this end, outside his day job with the Navy, he tended bar, drove taxis, worked as a projectionist and made all manner of investments in insurance, stocks, bonds, coins, cleaning supplies, potting soils, daycares, race horses, burgeoning authors—one burgeoning author, to be specific—and most importantly, real estate, his life-long investment passion that was sparked with his first home purchase in Norman, Oklahoma in 1955 and burned through to his last acquisitions in Southern Florida where he dreamed of spending his final days sunning poolside on a lounge chair with a stack of investment periodicals within arm’s reach.
While it may seem that he had little time for family, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Charlie was creative and resourceful and also mastered the two-birds-with-one-stone philosophy from an early age. Thus, a family outing could be anything from a night at the movies to a weekend painting a rental home. While other families packed beach towels and sunblock for an afternoon at the lake on a hot summer day, Charlie’s family packed chainsaws, lawnmowers and pitchforks—in addition to beach towels and sunblock—so they could tackle the overgrown yards of one or two rental properties en route to the beach. In this way, not only was Charlie extremely productive, but his unique approach to family time fostered a durable bond that lives on in his absence, indirectly bequeathed by his example, from one generation to the next.
By the late 1990s and early 2000s, Charlie did finally retire, by most definitions. He had attained an enviable level of freedom and took the opportunity to indulge his curiosity about the world, his ancestry and his extensive family at present.
He traveled to new places, traveled to visit extended family and traveled to relax. When he wasn’t away, primarily in the summers when the Pacific Northwest was his veritable Garden of Eden, he spent most of his time outside with Ginny taming their property—he as trail crew and her as the estate gardener.
During the last few years of his life, he reflected often on his many blessings with gratitude, fondness and nostalgia. He acknowledged his faults with more grace and greater humility than his younger self, exercised more patience and understanding, and frequently went out of his way to communicate the depth of his love and appreciation of and for all those in his life. Clearly, he did a lot right. He wasn’t perfect—no one is—but he excelled at the important things: he was present, he genuinely cared about the well-being and success of others, he shared and sacrificed of himself for others, especially his family, and most importantly, he didn’t hesitate to show, tell and make sure that his family knew without a doubt that they were seen and loved. The world was a better place with Charlie Cash in it. He will be sadly missed and, in our hearts, forever.
A graveside service will be held on Friday, December 20, 2024, at Tahoma National Cemetery in Kent, Washington at 10am.
Arrangements entrusted to Lewis Funeral Chapel in Bremerton, Washington.
