Lucky in life, unlucky in poker

After leaving school in the sixth grade, a postal clerk "never quit learning," collected reams of data, and did his own taxes until age 98.

C harles Coulter figured he was just naturally unlucky. All you had to do was look at the stacks of poker chips that had made their way from his part of the table to the other side. But Charles might have used up his luck elsewhere.

In 1918, he survived both the flu pandemic and a fireworks explosion that left him blinded for months. In the 1920s, he was working on a crew digging a railroad tunnel in Washington when a landslide missed him by inches. During the Depression, he hitchhiked, rode the rails, and sometimes had only boiled potatoes to eat. In 1942, on a U.S. Army transport to Hawaii, the ship lurched, he swallowed a peach pit, and couldn't eat or drink for six days.

Shortly after that unfortunate trip, Charles, a postal clerk by trade, was pulled off the ship to start a military post office. Many of his shipmates went on to die at Guadalcanal.

Early life was tough. In Montana blizzards, Charles -- he was never known as Charlie, even as a child -- walked to school, tied together to his brothers. To help support the family of nine, at age 13 Charles joined his brothers and worked as a bike messenger for Western Union, ending his formal schooling.

He got another kind of education that way. As Charles wrote in his autobiography, he got many calls from the Helena red light district to take messages to and from jail. At the railroad depot, he once personally delivered a telegram to President Warren G. Harding.

In 1924, when Charles was 17, he moved with most of his family to Portland, and worked for Western Union.

In 1935, he found a job paying $83.33 a month at the Bonneville post office, serving 5,000 workers building the dam. That's where Charles met a young schoolteacher named Edna Merritt. She was then transferred, and they dated long distance.

On Feb. 27, 1942, on a single day, he asked Edna to marry him, was sworn in at a job at the downtown Portland Post Office, and got his draft notice. The couple married the next day and honeymooned at the Battle Axe Inn near Mount Hood.

After the war, Charles went back to Edna and to a job as a window clerk at the post office in downtown Portland. In 1948, they bought land for a home at Southeast 66th and Taggart. Charles built a double garage first, and he and Edna lived in the garage for four years until they finished the house.

Edna worked for 25 years as a Portland schoolteacher, and the couple had no children. Charles retired in 1965 and they traveled.

Charles was always sensitive about having to quit school in sixth grade.

"I never quit learning even to this day," he penned in his handwritten autobiography in 2003, "and I don't tire of new knowledge."

He read the Bible and the dictionary and learned a new word every day.

Besides word puzzles and brain teasers, he had a set of odd hobbies to keep his mind busy: He collected postage meter marks and cataloged them (not the stamps, mind you; the meter marks). He collected the backs -- not the fronts -- of greeting cards dating to the 1930s, and product UPC codes, hoping to break the code.

He kept track of the dates and prices of every item he bought; weather statistics (high, low, sunrise, sunset); mileage and gasoline and oil for his 1993 Mercury Sable. He kept money in his wallet, in order of denomination, but also in order of which federal reserve bank it came from. He made and drank wine from his own Concord grapes.

He kept logs of Blazers game scores by quarter.

He was a recycler from way back, had garbage collection just once a month, did his own canning and his own taxes up until age 98, and made notepads from junk mail.

In 1986, he joined Mt. Tabor Presbyterian Church and served as an usher and volunteer.

He cared for Edna when she became ill with dementia, and visited her at the Lawrence Convalescent Center every day. When she died in 2000, he took a few weeks off, and went back to the center to call bingo, donating the prize treats. He became "Mr. Bingo."

When Charles was 95, he rekindled a romance with a former fiancee from the 1920s, Mitzi Lauretzen. The Depression had interfered, and they married others. They were engaged again when Mitzi died suddenly in 2005.

He had two 100th birthday parties just this past June. At both, he stood at a podium and told the story of his life. After 11/2 hours, he had reached only 1942.

He was still ushering and calling bingo when he came down with a kidney infection that killed him weeks later. He died Sept. 3, 2007, at 100 years old, in the home he built.

There was one more way Charles kept busy after his long retirement. The Coulter clan got together for penny ante poker. Charles always lost. He could not bluff a pot, and he wouldn't stay in or get out when he should.

He was just a very poor poker player who was convinced he was unlucky.
courtesy OregonLive.com

News Added: 23 September, 2007

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