By Jacqueline Kimball
THE ERICKSON TRIBUNE

Hickory Chase Priority List member Charles Allen embraces life as a participant, not a spectator. When he golfs with friends at Eagle Eye Golf Course near his far-eastside Columbus condo, Allen walks the entire nine holes—only half of all golfers in the United States do that. He belongs to two card groups, and he’s a staunch Kiwanian.

He is also a ROMEO—Retired Old Men Eating Out. The group has breakfast together at TJ’s every Wednesday. “We don’t do any projects,” he says. “We just sit there and talk.”

Military career
At 6’2”, Allen’s military bearing makes him easy to spot at Hickory Chase welcome center events where he’s quick to jumpstart conversations. “I think some of that comes from being in the military,” he says. “You move around and always make friends.”

Allen flew B-24s out of Italy during WWII. When engine trouble forced his crew to bail out over Yugoslavia, Marshall Tito’s partisans picked them up and they walked 42 days through the mountains until troop carriers rescued them. Seven missions later, Allen’s plane was hit by enemy fire. He was hospitalized with flak injuries and returned stateside. During the Vietnam War, he flew B-52 bombing missions, and also cargo missions. An assignment to Rickenbacker AFB in 1970 brought this Oklahoma native to Ohio. He retired in 1971 as a Lt. Colonel.

Freedom years
A widower, Allen began thinking about retirement communities a few years  go.

After reading The Erickson Tribune and reviewing the Hickory Chase Information Kit, he attended a welcome center luncheon last August. When the meal ended, he joined the Priority List.

Visits to two other Erickson communities, Seabrook in New Jersey and Fox Run in Michigan, “made me want Hickory Chase even more,” he says. “I’m not interested in seeing other places (in Columbus). It’s going to be Hickory Chase.”