For more than eight decades, Charles Hacker, whose life ended tragically when he was shot in the neck with an arrow on June 29 in the driveway of his daughter’s Pahoa home, was a real-life “Good-time Charlie.”
“He never met a stranger that I know of, except for one, the last one he met,” said Ron Wolfe of Poca, West Virginia, the younger brother of the 86-year-old man most knew as Charlie. “He liked to run around the country. He liked to go to Las Vegas. He had a lot of friends out there, and he’d go out to visit Kasey and Rodney Eisenhour. He’d visit with them and then come back.”
Kasey Eisenhour is Hacker’s daughter and Rodney Eisenhour is her husband. It was Rodney Eisenhour who found Hacker slumped over in his wheelchair, a puddle of blood staining the driveway of the couple’s Hawaiian Shores home, where Hacker lived the last year of his life.
Hacker was taken to Hilo Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.
“The reason he came here to live with me was he had dementia and was having a hard time living on his own, Kasey Eisenhour said. “He needed somebody to make sure he was fed, make sure he took his meds, take him to the doctor because he couldn’t be driving anymore. Up to that point, for a couple of years, my cousin Tina in New Jersey had been taking care of him.
“He was a friend to everyone and considered everyone a friend. And before he got dementia, he was always on the road, always going somewhere. He was a drinker, too. He sure knew how to party.”
Wolfe was more to the point about his gregarious older brother.
“He liked to have fun and liked to travel,” Wolfe said. “He was like a drunken butterfly, he just flitted everywhere. He was a partier from hell, buddy.”
Hacker, a U.S. Air Force veteran, was well-known and loved in several places he landed often. That includes the yearly Smoot School reunion, which is held on a farm close to where Hacker grew up in West Virginia.
“He really looked forward to going to that reunion every year,” Eisenhour said. “It keeps getting smaller and smaller every year. He was well-known there, of course.”
The reunion has a Facebook page, and the news of Hacker’s death spread like wildfire among the still-living alumni.
“I am so sorry to hear that, he was a joy to be around, will be missed at the school reunions, prayers for his family and friends,” Ruth Burns Polen posted.
Added June Houchins Patton, “Omgoodness, so sorry to hear that. … He was one of a kind. Proud to be his classmate.”
“I just remember what a handsome guy he was,” said Jerri Cadle Stickler. “He was 5 yrs older than me but such a nice man.”
Hacker, who was adopted as a child, grew up in and around Poca, about 18 miles northwest of Charleston.
“He grew up in poverty,” Eisenhour said. “All of his siblings, in one point in time, were scattered among multiple foster homes. And he’s got some pretty terrible stories from his youth. Considering all of that, I always thought he was a happier person than he should’ve been. I almost think it’s genetic, in a way.
“He was always smiling, always laughing, never down. The life of the party.”
The health issues Hacker experienced in he last couple of years of his life — the dementia, lymphoma and a recent bout of COVID-19, which he survived, all took a toll.
“He got quieter,” Eisenhour said. “He could not really hold a conversation like he used to. He could talk and talk and talk; he was a storyteller. He was always telling stories. And that’s something, I would say, that he couldn’t really do in the last couple of years.
“My dad kind of had a routine to his day. He would get up in the morning and have a bowl of cereal. And after that, he would walk outside. We’ve got a rocking chair on our front lanai, a rocking chair on our back lanai, and usually he would sit out there for a little bit. But he was always cold. … It’s 80 degrees outside but he’s still cold. And he would go to the end of the driveway, almost daily, and sit there in his walker. He just wanted to sit in the sun and get warm. … The neighbors knew him and knew that he had dementia, and they would kind of be on the lookout for him, as well.”
A 33-year-old neighbor, Cameron Stewart, is charged with second-degree murder in Hacker’s death. Stewart had been an archery instructor at Wranglers Roost, a Western-themed resort just outside Phoeniz owned by his parents, Reid and Heidi Stewart.
Cameron Stewart, who was indicted Wednesday by a Hilo grand jury, requested and is receiving a mental examination to determine his fitness for trial. Why Stewart allegedly attacked Hacker remains unclear.
Like others, Wolfe said when he heard the news about his brother he “just couldn’t believe it.”
“He had a lot of relatives back here. They was all upset over it,” he said. “I was hoping to see him die of old age.”
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.