Tom Nordlie
My name's Tom, I was one of Chuck's coworkers at the Gainesville Ollie's store during the past year. He helped me out in many ways when I was just starting, mostly with pointers on doing the job right, and encouragement to do my best.
He was a hard-working, common-sensical kind of guy with a wonderful sense of humor.
I have many memories of the early morning freight deliveries (usually on Wednesdays) when 6 or 8 of us would spend a few hours unloading merchandise from a semi truck and stowing it in the Ollie's freight room on pallets. There was always a lot of banter, and two of Chuck's favorite topics of conversation were professional wrestling and popular music -- he had seen a huge number of live wrestling matches and rock concerts and had amazing recollection of the details. One of the reasons I hit it off with Chuck is that I'd watched a lot of Championship Wrestling from Florida back in the '70s and '80s, so I was familiar with many of the same ring warriors that he followed.
Here's my favorite story from Chuck -- sometime in the early '80s, he'd attended a wrestling event in Gainesville that included Andre the Giant and Dusty Rhodes on the card. Afterward, Chuck went to the Vern's Kwik Stop convenience store on University Avenue, just west of 34th Street. When he went inside, Andre and Dusty were there -- they were going to buy beer but each wrestler was telling the other one "it's your turn to pay." This argument started off pretty friendly but when it started to get a little heated, Chuck spoke up and said something to the effect of, "fellas, I'LL pay for the beer if it'll help keep the peace between you." Dusty and Andre thought that was pretty funny, and no mayhem resulted. So, everyone in Gainesville (especially Vern) can thank Chuck Lee for the fact that no "pier sixer" erupted in the aisles. What a headline that would've been.
I'm sure going to miss Chuck's company, and my heart goes out to his family. Thanks for everything, pal.