AASP Primary Records Program

Star-Telegram Sunday, March 3, 2002
By Brian Builta

Former Professor Overcomes Obstacles to Publish
1903-1997

ARLINGTON- Ravaged by eight years of Parkinson's disease, Charles Felix has responded by launching a new career. "I'm trying to break into the writing field," said Felix, 80, who worked 24 years as a geologist and 13 years as a university professor. Between bouts of icing, a symptom that makes his hands and feet feel hard as rocks, Felix wrote Mud, Blood, and Barbed Wire, a volume of poems based on his World War II experience. He has also written a manuscript about creationism, a number of short stories and his memoirs. Most days are hard. Parkinson's stole Felix's career and home and now has affected his voice, nerves, lungs, vision, and coordination. He has spent most of the past eighty years in hospitals. "Some mornings I can't walk. Some mornings I can't talk," Felix said. "It's frustrating."

Connie Adkinson, a Senior Life Care nurse who befriended Felix, says he has handled his frustration well. "I've never seen bitterness," Adkinson said. "He still tries to work. That's why he's doing as well as he is. That's probably been one of the most difficult things in his life." Difficult is a relative term for a man who grew up working in a coal mine, who saw friends blown to pieces on the beaches of Bougainville, Guam and Iwo Jima during World War II, who survived four days floating on a raft in the Pacific Ocean after his transport ship was sunk, and who spent several years surveying the frigid North Pole for Sun Oil Company.

Ten years ago, at age 70, Felix was still running in senior road races. "I was king of the hill for the old fellows for 20 years," Felix said. His apartment at Arlington Plaza is lined with trophies he won during 111 races.

For all his toughness, friends say Felix has never lost his tender heart. "Here's a guy who is tough like a Marine, tough like a survivor of the coal mines, but is still soft on the inside," said Perry Reeves, a friend who's known Felix for more than 30 years. "That softness comes out in his stories." Felix's self-published book, Mud, Blood, and Barbed Wire, is a tender book about a vicious subject: war. Iwo Jima is lodged especially deep in Felix's mind. "It was hell," Felix said. "We lost 37 percent of our landing force on the beach. We had 7,000 Marines killed." Felix's company was devastated. "When it was all over with and I got off the boat in San Diego, out of the 200 of us that went overseas there were five of us left."

In Mud, Blood, and Barbed Wire Felix writes, "Hell should hold no horrors after Iwo, for we crawled through it with rifle and bayonet." Writing is not new to Felix, who said as a geologist he wrote 40 books of fossil and rock descriptions. Most of the fossils he worked on are in the Smithsonian Institution, Felix said. "I dug them up, I described….

IN THE SPOTLIGHT
CHARLES FELIX

Personal:
Occupation: retired
Born: July 2, 1921, Lynch Coal Mines, KY
Education: Lynch High School, Lynch Coal Mines, Ky., 1939; B.A. in botany, University of Tennessee, 1949; M.A. in botany and geology, Washington University of St. Louis, 1952; Ph.D. in paleobotany, Washington University of St. Louis, 1954.
Family: daughter Linda, 38; daughter Lisa, 36; daughter Charlotte, 32.
Experience: coal miner, U.S. Marine, amateur boxer, geologist, botanist, photographer, arctic explorer, professor, runner, writer

Career Highlights:

U.S. Marines, 1942-46
Geologist, Sun Oil Company, 1957-1981
Professor and dean of geology, Abilene Christian University, 1981-1994