BAR HARBOR — Charles, 96, died peacefully Nov. 26, 2011, at his Bar Harbor home. He was born Kasimierz Marcinkiewicz to Polish immigrant parents, March 4, 1915, in Beaver Falls, Pa.

The fifth of eight children, he attended Polish Catholic schools and started working at age 10, setting pins at the local bowling alley. In high school, he was active in sports and studied to become a bookkeeper. After graduating in 1932, the Great Depression had limited his bookkeeping prospects, so he hitchhiked to Pittsburgh and joined the Navy. He was on a train to the Great Lakes Training Center that night but forgot to tell his parents of his plans. After training, Charlie was a sailor on an old “four-piper” destroyer out of San Francisco. He yearned for adventure and exotic ports of call, but on his first trip to sea was seasick (for a week) before the ship cleared the Golden Gate Bridge. He loved being a “swabbie” but hoped that his future in the Navy would improve beyond his then-present duties of peeling potatoes. So, in his spare time, he tried to teach himself the college courses that he hadn’t taken in high school and finally passed the entrance exam to the Naval Academy Prep School. From there, he went on to the U.S. Naval Academy. At Annapolis, Charles was on the boxing team but struggled with alien subjects like spherical trigonometry. This was made much tougher by his yet-to-be-diagnosed narcolepsy, but through sheer perseverance, he graduated in 1938. Upon graduation he had decided to resign his commission, after being offered a good job at General Motors in Detroit. As the winds of war grew stronger, though, FDR had other plans for all service academy grads and Charles became a naval officer. He was ordered to the USS Arizona and with 50 other young ensigns aboard the big battleship, each of whom had to be in charge of something, Charlie became the band officer. Even though he couldn’t play a note, that didn’t stop him from transforming his musical troupe from a pomp-and-ceremony band into a swinging orchestra, complete with custom, fabric-swaged music stands. That year, the “Big A” won first place among all ships’ bands in the Pacific Fleet. He was then reluctantly (but luckily) transferred from Arizona and all but one of his band members were killed in the attacks on Pearl Harbor. Early in WWII, Charles served on destroyers in the Pacific, where as gunnery officer of the USS DW Taylor he was decorated for sinking a Japanese submarine. He was then ordered to New Caledonia to join the staff of Adm. William “Bull” Halsey. He had earlier attempted to become a member of Adm. Chester Nimitz’s staff in Hawaii but was not picked, even after “impressing” the admiral by beating him at bowling and pistol shooting. In 1943, he assumed command of his own destroyer, the USS Kalk. He was, by then, over his seasickness and had become an excellent mariner. He successfully guided his little ship through naval battles, including Phillipines Sea and Leyte Gulf, as well as the lethal 1944 typhoon “Cobra,” with waves topping 100 feet. For that, he was decorated for valor and received the Bronze Star. Later, his destroyer gained more praise for shooting down a kamikaze headed for the larger ships in his task force. At the war’s end he was anchored in Tokyo Bay near the USS Missouri for Japan’s surrender, enjoying the view of the ceremony through the great optics of his gun director. He said that he could almost “read the treaty” through the director and hopefully his choice of binoculars didn’t make the ship’s guns point at the dignitaries. Earlier, in 1942, Charlie was inexplicably plucked from the South Pacific and sent, along with scientists from MIT, to Bowdoin College to study the new science of radar. As someone chosen to bring practicality to theory, he was a fish out of water among the “eggheads” in peaceful Maine, sleeping through the endless lectures on sine waves and Doppler effect. It was there, though, that he met a fetching, young actress at Monmouth Theater named Irene Hill, from Bar Harbor. It was love at first sight and they “waited” for each other throughout the war, though ironically it was she who nearly died in 1943 from typhoid fever. They were married in 1946 and Charlie continued his career in destroyers and then at the Naval War College, while competing on the Navy pistol team. After two very narcoleptic tours at the Pentagon, where captains typed their own reports and fetched coffee for admirals, Charles was finally returned to sea duty as captain of the USS Vulcan, in Norfolk, Va. Under his command, Vulcan received every “E” for Excellence available in the Atlantic fleet. He completed his career as commanding officer of Naval Station, Boston before retiring in 1967. Charlie loved his retirement as much as Irene loved finally moving back to Bar Harbor. He gardened, played golf, took long walks but never expressed any desire whatsoever to go boating.

Charles was predeceased in 2004 by Irene, his wife of 58 years and was the last-man-standing among the eight siblings from Beaver Falls. He is survived by two children, Charlene Alling and Tom Marinke, both of Bar Harbor.

A memorial service was held Nov. 30, 2011, at the Bar Harbor Congregational Church. Interment at Ledgelawn Cemetery with military honors will follow next spring. Contributions in lieu of flowers can be made to the Bar Harbor Firemen’s Club/EMT, 37 Firefly Lane, Bar Harbor, ME 04609.