Fordson High School Alumni
Dearborn, Michigan (MI)
Charles Skinner Obituary
Charles Skinner attended Fordson High School in Dearborn, MI. View the obituary, post a memory, or share a photo about Charles Skinner.
| Graduation Year | Class of 1968 |
| Date of Passing | May 05, 2012 |
| About | SKINNER, CHARLES T. May 5, 2012. Beloved husband of Betty. Loving father of Anna and Tommy. Family will receive friends Tuesday 1-8 pm at Stanley Turowski Funeral Home 25509 West Warren, Dearborn Heights. Funeral Wednesday 10:30 am sharp at the east end of the Detroit Riverwalk (Parking will be available at 7600 E. Jefferson Rd., Detroit). Family ask to PLEASE consider being an organ donor. In lieu of flowers, the family requests Memorial Donations be made to the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy (http://www.detroitriverfront.org/supportus/) or to Gift of Life (http://www.giftoflifemichigan.org/about_us/contributions/) In the words of Len Bokuniewicz: We lost a Runyonesque character and the third star of our family vacations. My brother-in-law, Charlie Skinner, always said that if he could pick a time in which to live it would have been during the Roaring Twenties. He’d have driven a Duesenberg, worn a fedora and hung with the cats in the jazz clubs of downtown Detroit. Prohibition? I know exactly what Charlie would have said about the prospect of making bathtub gin at home in the basement, “I’d a been right there, baby.” He was, after all, the son of a bar tender who became a bartender himself, working the likes of the Bull Market in Detroit’s financial district and the Soup Kitchen Saloon in its warehouse district, before opening his own watering hole, the Silverdust Saloon, where he made a killing off the iron workers who stormed the joint during their lunch time breaks while erecting the infrastructure for GM’s controversial Poletown Plant during the early ’80s. “Shoot ‘em up, Charlie,” one of the regulars used to say. And so he did. The Chuckster loved a good story, and, hoo boy, could he ever tell one. With color and imagery and gusto and more damn sincerity than just about anyone I ever knew. Which is why he was able to go on to become one of AAA’s top-producing life insurance salesmen before his liver started showing signs of wear and tear a few years ago. Charlie never “sold” a policy. He explained “why you need to do this for your family.” Speaking of stories, everybody has one about ol’ Charlie: How the nuns at St. Al’s met with his parents to suggest that their son would probably do better at Fordson, the public school down the street. How he broke his leg the first time he tried parachuting out of an airplane. Or how he adventured around the globe by himself before settling down (well, sort of) with my sister Betty and raising two fabulous kids who embody all the ideals he espoused and who exhibit the drive and the discipline that he found difficult to muster. Our boy Charlie wasn’t much for rules. He abhorred convention. And he often bristled at the hypocrisy he perceived in those who attended church on Sunday yet discriminated against people of color every other day of the week or failed to share in the wealth they accumulated. And he practiced what he preached. He would always pull money out of his pocket for the panhandlers he encountered in the Motor City he loved to explore, and I would say to him, “Charlie, the guy’s a hustler—he’s scammin’ you, man.” And he would inevitably say to me, “Aw, you never know, Leonard. What’s a couple of bucks? The guy might really need it.” He even took in a homeless person once for three days. That was Charlie Skinner. He fed the hungry. He clothed the poor. Charlie was an only child who loved the concept of family more than anything else. That’s why, after his mother and father died, he so embraced mine. The best times I ever spent with him were on the extended family vacations 18 or 20 of us—my Mom and Dad, brothers and sisters, my kids and all the cousins—took to such places as the sprawling Frank-Lloyd-Wright-type mansion that Domino’s Pizza magnate Tom Monaghan built on Drummond Island (Charlie’s idea because he thought we should “go big”) or the collection of modest little cottages we rented on the shore of Lake Huron in Harrisville. We lost my Dad, the star of those shows, a few years back. Then we lost my Mom, our leading lady, a couple of years later. Last Saturday, we lost one of the greatest character actors of all time, the one and only Charlie Skinner. |
