Charlie Finks

After three years as a fourth grade teacher at Salem Elementary School  in Apex, N.C., a small city in the Raleigh-Durham metropolitan area, Charlie is ready for a change. In Spring 2006 he purchased a condominium in Cary. He quit his job at the end of the semester and embarked on a new career as a truck driver with Schneider! When not on the road, he volunteers at Salem Elementary, advising the news team.

Charlie had resigned from the Navy Reserve in 2005 and is no longer connected with the military at all. To review his transition to teaching, in the fall of 2002, he left the Navy and  enrolled in the Master's program at Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass., where he earned not only an M.Ed., but teacher certification for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and other states that have reciprocity with it, which include North Carolina. 

Charlie's Navy experience began when he ran into a persuasive Navy recruiter and enlisted for a five-year hitch.  He was trained as a journalist and after shining as a J-student at Fort Meade, Maryland, he was involved in a Sixth Fleet/AFN radio and television station on the island of La Maddalena, just off the northern coast of Sardinia, in the Mediterranean Sea.  What a beautiful spot that was!  Martha and Lee can attest to that, since they visited Charlie there in the fall of 1999, along with Cat.  (Cat was returning from her internship in Chengdu, China, by way of Bangkok and Istanbul.)  Not only did we see La Maddalena, but we also spent a week in Tuscany, with Charlie doing the driving, and also briefer stops in Rome and Venice.

Following that, Charlie was stationed in San Diego for the rest of his enlistment, but he was assigned to a mobile detachment and spent significant time in Bosnia and a lesser amount of time in Bahrain, just as things were heating up in the Middle East.  Charlie may have felt some regret at not being involved in our country's military efforts, but most of his family was and is considerably relieved.

Charlie's Contact Information


charlesfinks~AT~yahoo.com