Charles William Harvey Jr.

True to Charles’ need to maintain some control over his life and make his passing easier, he wrote his own obit.

Charles William Harvey Jr., a resident of Port Washington for more than 30 years, was called to meet his maker on May 12, 2026, at age 77.

Charles was an ABO certified optician and worked for Aurora Health Care since 1998 in its Port Washington and Good Hope clinics, retiring in May 2014. Prior to that,  he was with Shopko Optical in West Bend.

Charles and second wife Colleen worked together to plan their trips, from camping under the Cape Lookout Lighthouse of the Outer Banks of North Carolina and  genealogy research in Fairfax, Va., to their first overseas trip to Spain. Later adventures took them on multiple trips to Norway, Scotland and England. Trips were part of their shared interest in genealogy, the Civil War and their ancestral roots.         

Charles was born in Cheverly, Md., in 1949. After graduating high school in Bowie, Md., he joined  the U. S. Navy despite being against the war. He became a hospital corpsman. He married in 1969 and was stationed at Little Creek Amphibious Base in Norfolk, Va. Charles went on to Aviation Medicine School in Pensacola, Fla. He was attached to Attack Squadron 46 based at Cecil Field and deployed  twice on the USS John F. Kennedy CVA67 as a flight deck corpsman.    

Leaving the military in 1972, he moved to Berlin, Wis., with his wife and daughter.      

Charles was a Southern boy at heart, having loved the outdoors and woods back home —  his escape.    

Under the G.I. bill, he obtained his bachelor of science degree at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.    

Charles divorced in 1989. He met his wife Colleen Hanson and they were married in September 1995. They celebrated 30 years of marriage this past September in Scotland, a country he fell in love with, and England.    

Charles is survived by his wife Colleen Hanson-Harvey and Colleen’s son, daughter and grandsons, whom he loved as his own: stepson Jason Turner and his sons Holden,  Austin (Megan Zaczyk) and Owen (Ana Griebling); stepdaughter Jessica Mader (Marcus) and their sons Ethan (Grace Johns) and Evan; in-laws Mark and Craig Hanson, Cindy Scheftgen (Todd) and sons Andrew  (fellow Navy corpsman), Eric (Ariel), Linda Dolezal and sons Keith (Mary), Curtis and Kyle; his dearest cousin and friends back home in Maryland, Barbera Selby, Frank Bean, John Abell (C. Jenise Williamson), Dixie Jo and Brian McTighe, and Mike Conway of Kansas, Arlene Siracusa Simms (Roger) of Delaware and hunting buddy James Cauley (Linda).

He was preceded in death by parents Charles and Frances Harvey and sister Marie.    

Per Charles’ wishes, there will be no funeral. A celebration of life will be held at a later date with burial among Colleen’s relatives in Clam Lake, Wis., cemetery.      

“Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees.”  Thomas J. Jackson, May 10, 1863.