Dean Brickey mug.jpeg

I was deeply saddened the evening of Feb. 13 to learn of the death of a true American hero, Marine Sgt. Chuck Mawhinney. He died Feb. 12 at his home in Baker City.

He was Charles or Charlie while we sometimes got into mischief in Lakeview, our hometown. Charlie and I started kindergarten the same year. His mother, Beulah, owned and operated a beauty shop in her home on South E Street. His father, also Chuck, worked for Lake County and was a city police officer. Many times when Mom would go “to get her hair done,” Charlie and I would play together. We were fellow students at John C. Fremont Elementary School and were in some classes together. My Mom taught fourth grade at Arthur D. Hay Elementary while I was in a split third/fourth grade class across the street at Fremont. Neither of us had Mom as a fourth grade teacher.

My family lived a few miles west of town, so as Charlie and I got into junior high school, we drifted apart. He made new friends in town and found new interests. Band class, under instructors James Arment, Richard Peterson and John Jordan, was one we shared through junior high and high school. Charlie was a horn player like me, but he played a trumpet while I had a shorter cornet. That training would serve us well from the early 1980s into the early ’90s, when we played in the once-famed (at least in some circles) Baker Elks Drum & Bugle Corps.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. A review of our junior high and high school yearbooks revealed that Charlie was on the Student Council in 1961-62, when we were in seventh grade. We were in the same home room and we were on the seventh grade basketball B Team. The eighth graders comprised the A Team. Charlie and I often sat side-by-side in band class and frequently competed to move up a chair in the horn section.

“Dean, to a real nice boy,” he wrote in my yearbook. “Remember the fun we have had on (band) challenges? Good luck in the future. Charles.”

Other than band, Charlie and I had little in common during high school — other than we had a fondness for beer. A review of our high school yearbooks revealed that Charlie didn’t participate in many school activities. Instead, he developed an interest in flying, earned his pilot’s license and spent a lot of time with one of his best friends burning holes in the sky above Goose Lake Valley and beyond. He and his pals also were avid outdoorsmen, hunting and fishing all over Lake County. A couple of his favorite hunting spots were in the Silver Lake area of northern Lake County.

When he passed the test and earned his driver’s license, Charlie got a job at Jim Farleigh Ford, in the building now occupied by the Lakeview Elks Lodge. We graduated in 1967. That October, Charlie joined the U.S. Marine Corps. Because of his skill as a sharpshooter, developed in his youth with coaching from his father, his Marine commanders sent him to sniper school at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, in 1968. Upon completion of his specialized training, with the designation as “expert,” he was assigned to a scout sniper platoon in Vietnam.

That led to his fame as the No. 1 Marine sniper in Vietnam, with 103 confirmed kills. He had kept his service record a secret, even from his wife, until 1991, when he was outed in a book by another Marine sniper. In March 2023, Jim Lindsay, a friend of Chuck’s in Baker City, wrote Chuck’s biography, “The Sniper: The Untold Story of the Marine Corps’ Greatest Marksman of All Time.” Chuck wrote the foreword.

It was in Vietnam that Charlie became Chuck, because those of us who recall that drawn-out conflict remember that “Charley” was the common nickname for the enemy, the Viet Cong soldiers who challenged our troops and those of other countries with guerrilla tactics. Chuck is the name he used for the rest of his life. Charlie became a sniper instructor after his retirement from the U.S. Forest Service at age 47. He retired in 1997 after 30 years of federal service (including his time in the Marines). He had been the road maintenance supervisor for nearly two decades on the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest, based in Baker.

He began that job in 1981, when the Forest Circus actually maintained its roads regularly. He had moved to Baker from Mapleton, Oregon, where he worked for the Siuslaw National Forest in a similar capacity. It was in Mapleton that he met and married the love of his life, Robin Hood, a hometown girl. In Baker they raised three sons, Donald, Dennis and Cody. Robin’s parents, Paul “Pinky” Hood, and his wife, LaFaun, followed Chuck and Robin to Baker County. Pinky worked in circulation for the Baker City Herald for a few years in the 1990s.

Chuck’s family will conduct a celebration of his life this spring. Meanwhile, the U.S. Marine Corps intends for his legacy to be remembered. After Chuck’s exploits and success as a Marine sniper came to light in the early 1990s, it was suggested that the U.S. Marine Corps should rename a building at Camp Lejuene in his honor posthumously. What a great way for a grateful nation to honor and remember our Oregon hero! I sincerely hope that honor will be bestowed.

Charlie “Chuck” Mawhinney is survived by his sister, Veronica, of Bend; his wife, Robin, of Baker City; a daughter, Lisa Robinson, of Silver Lake, and sons, Donald “Donnie” of Union; Dennis “Denny” of Baker City and Cody of Imnaha.