Charles Howard Connelly Jr

Big Nickle

Charles H. Connelly (Jr.) “Chuck”, 94 years old, died on March 1st, 2026 of natural causes in Loveland, CO with family & friends bedside.

Born in Hillsdale, New Jersey to Charles H. Conolly (Sr.) (misspelling on birth certificate) and Elizabeth Hanaveld in 1932, he enjoyed 65 years of adventures to the end in his marriage with his surviving wife, artist Regina Theresa (Bardauskas) Connelly, painter, 6 years legal-secretary for lead lawyer w/ Chicago law firm Lord Bissell & Brook (Nuremberg trials), as student of Northwest University Art school. 

After high school chess club president, he continued his self-education in newspaper proofreading, typesetting, and folding machines. He worked in iron handrail fab & install. Enlisted in the Pennsylvania Dutch Army National Guard, achieved Master Sergeant rank and was a trophy earning marksman. Employed his Civilian Private Pilots License as a flying welding supplies distributor for Forney industries throughout the midwest. Generating death defying landing & takeoff yarns. Travelled to Japan and Hawaii as a member, and consulting expert, on micro-pulse welding in the American Welding Society. Entrepreneur of small businesses in Fort Collins: Western American Sports Products, Futec, Arcon, and Pescatarian Treasures. He won Military research contracts to try to invent a welding process that could make perfect welds, ostensibly to make x-ray testing obsolete. Wearing all the hats of a visionary, engineer, draughtsman, fabricator, and salesman. In his prime he worked as a metallurgist and welding consultant on projects with NASA (we do proudly have spaceship parts from an Apollo rocket), Navy submarine hulls and warship superstructures, Air Force castings in aluminum, and a long list of medical, automotive and aeronautical production.    

Charles waterskied and snow skied w/ Robert F. Kennedy joining his campaign, while Regina helped his pregnant wife Ethel Kennedy. He took ski lessons as soon as he met Regina at a party - to court his sweetheart, and filmed himself doing a front flip on skiis the same year.

He lent his size 12 roller skates ("with the new aluminum trucks!") to an intoxicated Yankees baseball player Mickey Mantel ("after winning a poker game win from pitcher Whitey Ford"), and watched him trash a polished wooden hotel ballroom floor with his steel street wheels in the wee hours in Chicago. "The lights were off and the tables were stacked against the walls with glass objects on them and I'd hear, CRASH!, BOOM! in the dark. I guess he didn't know how to stop." Chuck without pronouncement could pirouette spin on roller-skates as elegantly as an olympic ice-skater, leaving onlookers and family agog.

He supported Regina’s art, tour guiding every painting in the house, providing studio space, attending openings, built displays & frames. He creatively pioneered very alternative x-mas tree shapes, for holiday parties he hired Archi Ulm to play the family organ, and made citrus and cinnamon highly sought-after mulled wine.

In 1980 Chuck & Regina planned thee epic family vacation to Alaska for a month, knowing their 4 teenagers were rearing & bucking to leave the home nest.  A year in advance he subscribed to Alaska magazine to research sights, routes, weather, fly-fishing, and tourist highlights. He assembled a spectacular plan, and a multi-trailer caravan made up of a GMC Suburban pulling a 26’ Argosy trailer which was hitched to a 14’ john boat on its own trailer!!! 6 people in a truck under 2 canoes, minibike on the front, gold dust pans, cameras, guns, fishing rods, adventure gear, it was a once in our lifetime sight, many stared upon - we crewed it.

The charter for halibut was astonishing, visits w/ island artists w/ their pet seal - thrilling, panned for Yukon gold, rescued travelers who had driven off of a mountain road. So many epic sights, one enduring -ism was how many bald eagles we spotted, in the beginning Chuck offered a nickel per sighting - sometime mid trip he muttered, "Ho-hum another bald eagle" - we still use his pithy humor today. 

On the return leg through British Columbia "Chuck & Reg" decided rather than drive through those mountains in poor weather, their kids needed more space to do their own out-of-the-truck thing, so we dog-legged over to the coast and took a ferry South, and everyone spread out for the cruise.

Remembered for his ecstatic Big-Fish story telling with passionate flair-ups, and it was really the minutia he'd include: full names recalled, nicknames, spouses, careers, dates, times, streets, what they were wearing, who else was there, secret footnotes, etc, in EVERY story, even from his childhood.

He admired his father for HIS story telling, and he'd get a nickel a day for carrying a water bucket around for his dad & workers to have a drink. He told us, "It was a Friday, I wanted to see a movie, probably Gaslight or Hunchback, the foreman overheard me and gave me a quarter at the end of the day. I'd never seen a quarter before shouting hey! I got a Big Nickel! Well the guys got a kick outta that - and called me Big Nickel for a while."

Frequent submitter of mischievous counterpoint editorials to local newspapers, avid reader, civil war researcher, jazz collector, he wrote & memorized poems. Charles was a martini connoisseur, loved Oysters Rockefeller, pickled pig's feet, liverwurst on a triscuit, cheesecake, chocolate ice cream ("why would anyone order vanilla?"), and especially a good story well told.

He called Brooklyn NY, Northern New Jersey, Chicago IL, Los Angeles CA, and Fort Collins CO, and Loveland CO, home in series. 

Also survived by siblings; Jean (Binaghi) C. + (Ron d.),Sharon (Chimochowski) C. + (Ray d.), and Kenny C. and children: Alan B. Connelly + his wife Maureen (Maniatis) and their daughter Shelly A. Connelly and her companion Jared Atencio, and brand new great great grandson McClain West Atencio. Cathleen A. Connelly and companion Jeff, Beverly N. Connelly and companion Sean M., and Howard J. Connelly and companion Adrianna A.

Preceded in death by siblings Joan, James, and Richard.

In lieu of flowers, donations to: Doctors without borders,

Or to any antiwar organization would be an appropriate tribute.

In honor of his poem “The children of Ukraine”.