Charles Blanchard, 1943-2024

Charles E. “Chuck” or “Charlie” Blanchard, age 80, passed away on August 17, 2024 at his home in Gardnerville, Nevada. He was surrounded by loved ones. After a long illness, he made the choice to go into Hospice care, and had time to reminisce, enjoying notes and calls from friends and loved ones. Charlie was born November 21, 1943 to Bernie and Ann Blanchard in Savannah, Georgia on an Army base where his father was preparing to ship out to service in China. He was raised in Unionville, Connecticut on farmland that his Grandfather had purchased.

He graduated from Farmington High School in 1961, from College of the Holy Cross in 1965 and went on to earn a Masters Degree from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. Following graduation, he taught middle and high school English in VISTA, at Avon Old Farms, and at E.O. Smith High School in Storrs, Connecticut. A grant from Cornell University to write poetry took him to Ibiza, Spain and later to England. Charlie knew from the age of four that he was a musician, and began his professional career in London in 1970, playing piano to dinner crowds at Flanagan’s. He moved on to Amsterdam in 1972 to play for three years at O’Henry’s. Upon return to home, in Coventry, Connecticut he continued to provide music in the Hartford area at restaurants, private clubs, political gatherings, and on a Connecticut Riverboat with his band, The Mad Hatter Jam Session. He was the featured pianist and entertainment director at Shenanigans in Hartford from 1979-89 and at Butterfield’s in West Hartford from 1991-97. He played standing up in front of two Yamaha electric keyboards, playing for three hours at a stretch, segueing seamlessly from blues, jazz, and classical styles in what he termed, “schizophonic mudlies”, his term for medlies. He described himself as “a piano minstrel” and all the music was in his head, he never used sheet music. While living in the Netherlands Charlie joined several archaeological digs, and became hooked as an explorer of the past.

What began as an interest, became a second career as he morphed into a professional archaeological surveyor commuting to work in Charlotte Harbor, Florida and Lake Tahoe, California. He carved out a dual career, winters in Florida, summers in Lake Tahoe, doing survey work on weekdays and playing music on weekends, with off time between seasons at home in Coventry, Connecticut, running his business at Blanchard and Associates. In 1974 on a trip to Florida he began exploration by canoe in the waters of Southwest Florida, a method of discovery that repeated the transportation in dugout canoes used during the thousands of years of habitation of this area by indigenous cultures. After 15 years and 40 trips from Sarasota Bay to St. James City he published, “Analogy and Aboriginal Canoe Use in Southwest Florida”, a Florida Anthropological Society publication. His maps of shell mounds left by the Calusa culture in Charlotte Harbor led to winter employment by the Florida Division of Recreation and Parks as the Cultural Resource Manager of Charlotte Harbor. For many years beginning in 80’s he spent winters on Gasparilla Island playing music weekends at Mark’s Theater Restaurant, later PJ’s Seagrille, or in the Caribbean Room at Temptation’s Restaurant. During Florida’s Year of the Indian he developed and taught a curriculum on native peoples for 58 South Florida schools, working with fellow anthropologists, including Bob Edic out of the Randell Research Institute on Pineland. He was also privileged to work with Dr. George Luer, Florida archaeologist and editor of “The Florida Anthropologist”.

Charlie’s curriculum for school children demystifying indigenous culture was later used in schools in Arkansas and Connecticut. His first book, “New Word’s, Old Song’s”, an understanding of the lives of ancient peoples in Southwest Florida through archaeology was published by The University of Florida in 1995. While living in Boca Grande, Florida, Charlie became very involved in the history of Gasparilla Island working on two books for the Boca Grande Historical Society. He edited, “Boca Grande, Lives of an Island”, published in 2006, and co-edited, “One Island, Three Hometowns” in 2010. In the Lake Tahoe area Charlie played at The Loft restaurant from 1977-85, with breaks to play at The Mission Ranch or from the flatbed of a truck in San Francisco. He also wrote columns under the pseudonym of Tucker Drouin and Joan LeVetti for “Tahoe Visions” magazine, reviewed plays and taught piano at Sierra Nevada College.

His work in Nevada included surveys in the Carson Valley, the Tahoe area, and Placerville, California. He consulted with Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit (LTBMU) Archaeologists from 1986-90. He often worked with archaeologists, Susan Lindstrom and William Bloomer and Washoe tribe representative, Linda Shoshone. Over three summers beginning in 1986 he soloed in his canoe for the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit documenting in a low water survey the exposed shoreline of Lake Tahoe. Charlie liked to survey the high country around Lake Tahoe in windy weather, looking for sheltered sites, as he believed ancient peoples would have done the same. He chronicled over 60 sites using his methods. He also explored the remains of the flumes that brought water from Tahoe to Carson City and the artifacts Chinese flume tenders left behind. His work exploring the gold rush era in California led to publication in 1994 as a co-author of, “Spanish Hill, Placerville’s Mountain of Gold”.

In the Northeast, Charlie found artifacts in his backyard in Coventry and connected with archaeologists at the University of Connecticut. When a government sewer project was slated for his neighborhood, he lobbied officials with his backyard findings and the project was halted until archaeological research was completed resulting in 16,000 artefacts from the site. A hike along the Appalachian Trail behind the National Zoo led to poking around a creek bank where he found stone hammers and points, resulting in Smithsonian and Congressional officials visiting the site and calling for a study and display for the findings. Charlie also visited classrooms in Coventry, CT spreading knowledge of ancient peoples and the artifacts they left behind.

Charlie is survived by his wife, Sarah Watson DeCew. They met in Boca Grande at PJ’s Seagrille in 2000 where he was providing music and she was cooking, and have been together ever since. They lived in Boca Grande or in Connecticut until buying a home together in Gardnerville, Nevada in 2005. Charlie loved his backyard view of the Sierras! He also leaves behind sisters, Rosemary Blanchard of Albuquerque, NM and Helen O’Connor (Thom) of Nehalem, OR, brother Michael Kelly Blanchard (Greta) of Unionville, CT and 9 nieces and nephews and their children; also, two step-children, Amy DeCew of Sarasota, FL, and Stuart DeCew (Amanda) and their two boys of North Haven, CT, and his dear friend of over 50 years, Ben Funk (Lorrie) of Coventry, CT and their children. Charlie’s ashes will be interred in Lakeview Cemetery in New Canaan, CT this next summer. A line he wrote recently reads, “His grandfather taught him to canoe, let him loose now and let him travel the earth and the water he loved to return to”.

And so, we will!