Havasu Veterans | Charles Fox

“At the time, Vietnam was going on, and there was a draft,” Fox said. “A good friend of mine and I, we were still seniors in high school, and we decided when we graduated we were both going to go in the Marine Corps. And four days after graduation, we were in bootcamp.”

For the first ten years, he was a small arms repairman. He decided it was time for a change, a chance to move up the ranks, so he went to school to become an air frames metalsmith on A-4 and CH-53 aircraft.

Fox was a metalsmith for two and a half years before he got transferred to El Toro, California, where he finished his last seven years at the wing headquarters. There, Fox was in charge of their individual material readiness list program, which tracked all of the support equipment used by all the aircraft in the 3rd Marine Air Wing.

“If there was ever a conflict, they had prepositioned equipment that could be offloaded rather quickly to set up support for the aircraft,” Fox explained. “That was the most fulfilling thing I did.”

His hardest moment was when his original enlistment was ending.

“It was like, ‘Okay, what am I going to do now?’” Fox remembers. “And finding out that the job market was very slim at that time and knowing that if I did re-enlist, I still had a roof over my head and I could support my family — that’s what kept me going. At least I knew I had a job.”

As a 17-year-old new recruit, his time in the Marine Corps molded him into a man.

“I think it taught me self-confidence, respect for the higher-ups, and it made you grow up quickly because now you’re responsible for your own finances, your future and everything else,” Fox said.

Fox retired in June 1988 at 37 years old after 20 years as a Marine. For the last seven years, he’s lived in Lake Havasu City with his wife, Eva, who is also a veteran. You can read her story in our collection of veteran profiles at HavasuNews.com.

They met on the internet at the end of 2006 after Charles lost his wife. They got married in January 2008 on a cruise ship, which is something they still love to do together. Traveling and spending time with friends are Charles’ favorite things to do.

While they dated, Eva turned Charles into a clown — literally. The pair are professional, award-winning clowns.

“I sell Mary Kay cosmetics, and a friend of mine was a magician who I knew in the Army,” Eva said. “He was trying to do a TV show in Sacramento, so he asked if I could do his makeup. He was blonde, pale — he said he washed out on the camera.”

As she did his makeup, his coworker arrived — a professional clown that would do story-telling on the show.

“I watched her clown up, and I said, ‘You know, I was a clown once for Halloween and it was great,” Eva said. “Nobody knew who I was and I could do whatever I wanted.”

The woman gave Eva her card, and two months later she was working as a clown. She had face painting down, but she needed a balloon twister to accompany her, and Charles was the perfect, willing candidate. The pair took off from there, winning regional and global awards for their skits together and throwing new characters into their repertoire, like Santa and Mrs. Claus.

Charles and Eva built a successful business together in California, but after a while, it was time to slow down. The military couple look forward to when Charles’ time as Exalted Ruler wraps up at the end of March, allowing them to spend more time on the road — enjoying the country they both served.

“I think a lot of people know, but without the military, we wouldn’t have the great country that we do,” Charles said. “If more people would realize that and respect it, our country would be a whole lot better off.”