Charles Gloar

Charles Ray Gloar March 4, 1955 – December 12, 2018

My brother, Charles, died on December 12, 2018, at Valley Baptist Hospital as a result of multiple complications from having lived for more than 40 years with quadriplegia. In 1976, at the age of 21, he had been a passenger in a car that was involved in a head-on collision. He told me once that that night, for some reason he paused and almost put the seat belt on but didn’t. When the car he was riding in impacted on the passenger side with a parked car that was sticking out into the highway just over the crest of an overpass, his body flew forward, his head hit the dashboard, and his neck was broken. This football player and motocross rider would ride no more. Charles never blamed the driver of the car he had been riding in. It had simply been an unforeseeable accident.

Charles was stubborn and obstinate in epic proportion but perhaps that was the secret to his longer-than-expected life. Around 30 years after his injury we were sitting at the dinner table and I told him that the doctors had only given him 10 years to live. His body pulled back with shock and his eyes opened wide and he said, “Good thing no one told me!” It was then that he told me that after the accident he told “the light” that he wasn’t ready to go. The light told him that he could stay if he chose but his life wouldn’t be the same. He stayed and, indeed, his life wasn’t the same. Perhaps that very act of conscious choice while in the divine was the fuel for his fierce strength and courage.

Some may look at his life and consider it uneventful but living his life took supreme courage every day. I would say that his greatest outward achievement was in creating, editing, writing, and publishing the magazine, Challenge, Magazine of the disABLEd. There is only one issue but his journey to create that one issue was strewn with milestones and enormous successes. One such success was the publishing of a never-before-published short story by Larry Niven, an award-winning writer of science fiction.

My brother’s insistence on living an independent life in his own home was only made possible by the loving care of attendants, nurses, and doctors along the way. I was not with my brother when he died but his attendant and his nurse WERE there, talking to him, singing to him, and affirming to him that he was loved. To the agencies and individuals who respected Charles’s wishes, tolerated his eccentricities, and who helped him live life on his own terms I extend the heartfelt gratitude of our entire family.

Charles is preceded in death by his father, Clarence Ray Gloar, his mother, Anna Louise Cutchshaw Gloar, sister Ray Ann Gloar, and his brother, Harold Graham Day. He is survived by his sisters Patricia Day Logan, Alma Gloar Harris, and Paloma Lavon Gloar Guerrero and brothers-in-law Russ Logan and Elias Guerrero.

A private memorial service will be held in the spring.

Messages of condolence can be sent to email address crgloar@gmail.com.