Charles Kellar Burns, Jr. died October 20, 2021, surrounded by his family and close friends, as his granddaughter played the violin. He was brave throughout his life, even in the face of a Stage IV cancer diagnosis.

Charlie was predeceased by his wife of 47 years, Charlotte. There is no doubt that they have been reunited, and she is forcing him to dance with her at this very moment.

Charlie is survived by his daughter, Christin, his son, Charles, his sister, Deborah, and their respective families – including four grandchildren: C.K., Grant, Evelyn, and Kellar.

Charlie was born in Vallejo, California, but spent his formative years in Crawford, Texas. In his youth, he was notorious as the boy who always had his nose in a book – during fishing excursions, family reunions, and football scouting trips with his dad, who was the head coach at Crawford High. He first met Charlotte in elementary school in Crawford and claims to have been smitten from then on.

He graduated with a BA in History from Baylor University in 1968 and began teaching junior high history. In July 1969, he was inducted into the United States Army as the Vietnam War was happening. While some of his peers opted for additional time in college or graduate school, and yet others joined the reserves or National Guard in order to avoid active duty service, he did not believe that he was entitled to avoid service in Vietnam. He attended Officer Candidate School, and on his second wedding anniversary – soon after he discovered Charlotte was pregnant with their first child, Charles - he departed for Vietnam. He wanted nothing more than to be in Texas with Charlotte, but there was simply no honorable way to do that.

Charlie's service in Vietnam provided him with advanced training in respect for humankind. He observed things there that he continued to contemplate until the end of his life. Out of the 120 soldiers in his infantry company, only one had a college degree. They were good men and skilled soldiers, but there were no sons of privilege or many members of the middle class. It struck Charlie as fundamentally unfair that the burdens and sacrifices necessitated by an allegedly common struggle were largely borne by those with the least education and resources.

During Charlie's tour of duty in Vietnam, he spent time with the infantry in the jungle, and was exposed to Agent Orange. His unit operated in what was designated a free-fire zone, where anyone unidentified – whether unarmed; young or old; man, woman, or child – could be presumed an enemy combatant and engaged accordingly. Charlie understood the policy was intended to save American lives, but it struck him as absurd that protecting South Vietnamese people meant trying to kill them without engaging in further thought.

In 1972, Charlie was honorably discharged from the Army. Thereafter, he spent time counseling probated and paroled felons convicted of drug-related offenses, while pursuing a PhD in Habsburg history at Rice University. His PhD program required that he spend a year scouring the military and political archives in Vienna, Austria. He arrived in Vienna in January 1978 when it was gray, snowy, and frigid. He knew not one person in the city, had no place to live, had no money, had little confidence in his command of German, and subsisted largely on hazelnuts. His experience was a combination of urban survival and language immersion, which culminated in earning his PhD in 1979.

It is not known precisely how a PhD in Habsburg history prepared Charlie for a career with the Internal Revenue Service, but he served the IRS from 1979 to 2006 in both technical and managerial positions. He initially had aspirations for high office, rank, and power; however, he claims he was unsuited to high office, having only limited social skills, a congenital inability to genuflect in a servile manner, and a disconcerting habit of bluntly speaking the truth. He spent his happiest years at the IRS working as an efficient, albeit occasionally unorthodox, widget-maker.

After leaving the IRS, Charlie worked as a CPA in private practice, representing taxpayers suffering from IRS problems. His practice allowed him to indulge his passion for travel to Austria, Poland, Romania, and Ukraine. He made many pilgrimages to concentration camps, desecrated synagogues, and abandoned Jewish cemeteries and made photos of these sites. He visited these sites to pay respect to vanished civilizations and bear witness. He grappled with the unanswerable questions that grow out of tragedy, and he published two books documenting his experiences. As a result of his adventures in eastern Europe, he gained friends around the world, and more importantly, he attempted to see things through the eyes of others.

When Charlotte was diagnosed with primary liver cancer in 2003 and again in 2013, Charlie was by her side. He was a superior caregiver for many years, and he said he would do it all again. Charlie was also a doting father, religiously attending all of his kids' school and athletic activities (often mysteriously appearing in the woods on a cross country course).

Charlie was a beloved grandfather. He wrote a series of children's books featuring two mice, Hamilton and Egbert ("Ham and Eggs"). He delighted in reading to his grandkids and passing along his lifelong passion for reading and writing.

In the way he lived his life and the way he treated others, Charlie was a mensch, a person of high integrity and character. He set an example of how to be a deeply good human, how to hold onto hard, important questions and keep turning them over in one's mind. We will miss his wicked sense of humor, his writing, his voicemail greetings rebuking Ted Cruz and Greg Abbott, and his humble charity to others.

A celebration of life will be held in 2022 at a date yet to be determined. If you would like to honor Charlie, please consider making a donation to the Houston Holocaust Museum: https://9368a.blackbaudhosting.com/9368a/Unrestricted or the Charlotte Davis Burns Science Resource Center (contact David Wallace – David.Wallace@cfisd.net).