Charlotte "Charlee" Gutheil

Dear friend Charlee,
I first met you when you were a teacher in Fairplay, CO. I was with our mutual friend, Barb Kellogg, when we stopped to visit you on our way home from a day of skiing. We sat in chairs that had the legs cut off to make it easy to put our feet in front of the floor level fireplace. This is a true example of Charlee-ism.
After that first meeting over the years we became fast friends. Whenever you came home for a visit we would get together. When you were in the Azores teaching I would stop by and visit your parents.
Years later, when you were teaching at Incirlik, Pam and I were able to visit you and travel to Ephesus together. You had a home in Adana. You were only allowed to have three pets in the event of an evacuation, but you fed so many more stray dogs and cats.
You were feeding two female puppies whose mother had been killed. There had been two other puppies, both males, in the litter, whom you found homes for, but no one wanted the two females because they could have puppies. We fell in love with these two pups.
You had hired a Turkish veterinarian to come to your house to spay the two female puppies along with a few other female dogs you had been feeding. The surgeries took place on your ping-pong table!
Somehow you convinced us to adopt the two female puppies whose mother had been killed. We told Charlee that if she could get them to us back home in Colorado that we would take them. Of course, after we returned to Colorado, Charlee found a person who was flying home to Denver. This person brought our two girl puppies along as checked bags in kennels in the cargo hold. We have a picture still of us meeting our two new pets, whom we named Shiloh and Fawn, at the Denver airport. We had these two wonderful pets for 13 years.
Charlee has always had a place in her heart for dogs and cats. Our story is a perfect example of this.
After Charlee retired and returned home to Denver, she lived in the family home which she inherited from her parents who were gone by then. She had lost her sister by then also.
Another Charlee story involves her sister. Her sister, Betty, Charlee’s only sibling, was in Turkey visiting when Betty became very ill and was hospitalized. Charlee was not pleased with the way Betty was being cared for and was determined to get her sister back to a hospital in Denver.
Charlee was told that Betty had to be accompanied by a medical person to be allowed to fly. This information did not stop Charlee. Charlee bought a pair of hospital scrubs and a stethoscope and became Betty’s “medical escort” to get Betty back to Denver! Charlee thoroughly believed that where there’s a will there’s a way!
As Charlee’s lifelong friend and fellow physical education teacher and coach, I will miss being able to bring lunch and bring our two little dogs to visit her in Denver. She loved being in her family home which she had added onto by my contractor brother after her parents were gone.
Charlee’s neighbors will miss seeing her sitting out in her front yard passing out treats to every dog being walked by her house.
Rest well, dear Charlee. Pam, Barley, Jetson and I will miss you. Say hi to your mom, dad, and sister, and Schnookums, and our Shiloh and Fawn, for us.
Our lives will be forever entwined.