Charles L. \u201cJohnny\u201d Ecker \u201956, died May 13, 2001, after a long\u00a0illness. He was a dear classmate of the editor as both pledged in 1952 and graduated from OWU in 1956. \u201cCharlie\u201d was one of the Ohio\u00a0River boys from Gallipolis (along with Halliday, Thomas and Dailey), who found their way to Delaware in the 1950s. While at OWU Charlie\u00a0majored in both political science and history, but his true love was\u00a0music. A devoted Presbyterian , he was deeply involved in the life of the\u00a0First Presbyterian Church of Gallipolis and participated in many of the\u00a0church musical programs and frequently performed in recitals and\u00a0musical plays in the Gallipolis area.<\/p>\n
In the early 1990s, Charlie made one of his many visits to Dayton\u00a0for a reunion with brothers Wright, Rich and Tatham. The scene was Dan Wright\u2019s home in Eaton, and while leaning over Dan\u2019s pool table,\u00a0Charlie reeled off from memory the score from \u201cThe Music Man,\u201d which he had performed a few years before. As he sang Robert\u00a0Preston\u2019s famous part \u201c\u2026 and that rhymes with P and that stands for pool\u201d \u2026 and \u201c\u2026 did you ever see a jockey ride Dan Patch? well, I\u00a0guess not!\u201d Charlie brought joy to the children who were there \u2026 and left a memory forever for those of us who were there.<\/p>\n
He was a member of the OWU chorus and studied under the late\u00a0Professor Gordon Almstead. He starred for the Beta\u2019s intramural football team, which won championships all 3 years when he played.\u00a0After military service, Charlie returned to Gallipolis where among other\u00a0careers, he coached his Gallia Academy high school football team to an\u00a0undefeated 9-0 record and state recognition in 1970. He later coached\u00a0the baseball team at Rio Grande College. Baseball was a great love for\u00a0Charlie. The highlight of his life was attending Dream Week with the\u00a0Cincinnati Reds and having his own Reds uniform and picture card to\u00a0prove his prowess on the field. Charlie was a loyal Beta brother and\u00a0will be sorely missed by all who knew him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Charles L. \u201cJohnny\u201d Ecker \u201956, died May 13, 2001, after a long\u00a0illness. He was a dear classmate of the editor as both pledged in 1952 and graduated from OWU in 1956. \u201cCharlie\u201d was one of the Ohio\u00a0River boys from Gallipolis (along with Halliday, Thomas and Dailey), who found their way to Delaware in the 1950s. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,4],"tags":[27],"class_list":["post-1866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-of-ever-honored-memory","category-theta-data","tag-march-2002-theta-data","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetachapterbtp.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetachapterbtp.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetachapterbtp.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetachapterbtp.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetachapterbtp.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1866"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thetachapterbtp.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5562,"href":"https:\/\/thetachapterbtp.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1866\/revisions\/5562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetachapterbtp.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetachapterbtp.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetachapterbtp.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}