Chilkat Valley News - Serving Haines and Klukwan, Alaska since 1966

Funeral services will be held 3 p.m. Saturday at the American Legion Hall for teacher, fisherman, and longtime resident Charles "Charlie" Brouillette.

Brouillette, 86, died of congestive heart failure Aug. 21 at Evergreen Hospital hospice facility in Kirkland, Wash. Daughter Harriet Brouillette, along with her mother Harriet and sisters Judy and Mary, was at her father’s bedside. "He was polite right to the very, very end. He was still saying ‘thank you’ and ‘yes m’am,’" she said.

Friends and family this week described Brouillette as polite, gentle, kind, and capable. Richard Buck, who, like Brouillette, worked as a school teacher and fisherman, said: "Charlie was one of nicest people I have ever known. It’s not that he was all upbeat about things, but he didn’t downgrade anyone."

Brouillette taught fifth grade when Doris Ward arrived in Haines to teach English in 1965. "You didn’t see men in elementary school then, except the principals. I was surprised to see ‘Mr. B’ and to learn he had been teaching for a while. The kids loved him. He had a way of looking you right in the eyes when you were talking to him, but his eyes were twinkling."

A Facebook page this week included tributes by former students. Trudie Jones wrote, "I remember he read books to us and would appoint someone to be the class monitor…making sure everyone was minding their Ps and Qs." Jeannie Fairbanks called him a great teacher, and recalled ‘Mr. B’ showing her how to carve and weave. Kim Clifton said he was a "wonderful storyteller with a keen sense of humor."

Brouillette was born in Haines on June 22, 1922. His father was Charles Brouillette, a French-Canadian horse trader who worked for Jack Dalton. His mother, Mary Campbell, was a Yendeistakye villager and direct descendant of legendary shaman Skondoo, family said.

Brouillette graduated from Haines High School and lived much of his life at 3 Mile Haines Highway in his boyhood home that his father had floated to town from Pyramid Harbor. They moved it on iced skids from Jones Point, a few feet at a time, said daughter Harriet. "It was supposed to be in the meadow above where it now sits, but it took so long to get it where it is, they decided that’s where it was going to sit."

The house was adjacent to two large gardens where the family raised pigs, chickens, and horses.

His father died when Brouillette was 17 and young Charlie went to work on the Alaska Highway to help support the family. He worked in Glenallen as a laborer and equipment operator. He told his children that it cost him most of the money he earned that summer to get back home.

He joined the Army during World War II and was stationed in Panama were he became a fishing guide for officers. "He got the job because he was from Alaska and knew how to fish and run boats, so they made him a guide for the officers and mucky-mucks down there," Buck said.

Brouillette told his family that he took a rowboat through the Panama Canal’s Gatun Locks with a friend from Hoonah.

Brouillette attended college on the G.I. Bill and graduated from St. Martin’s University in Lacey, Wa. with a teaching degree in 1954. He taught briefly in Haines at the start of his career and also taught in Kake, Metlakatla, Tenakee, and in a village on the Alaska Peninsula near King Salmon. He spent the last years of his career teaching in Haines where he retired in 1978.

In Tenakee, where Brouillette was principal-teacher, he also served as oil distributor and health aide. He spent five years teaching at the Lummi Indian Reservation Tribal College, moving his family back to Haines each summer, where he skippered a gillnetter.

"He wanted us to experience America. Kids from small-town Alaska can have a hard time adjusting down there. He didn’t want us to be freaked out by life in other parts of the country," daughter Harriet said.

Brouillette met Harriet Jackson in the late 1950s, when he was a single dad teaching in Kake. She was a clerk at a Kake store when Charlie’s four-year-old son Robert started charging popsicles to his father’s account. "She had to figure out who Robert’s father was. That’s how she met Dad," Harriet said.  They married in 1960 and raised his two boys Robert and Al, and had four more children together, Judy, Harry, Harriet, and Mary.

After retiring from teaching, Brouillette continued fishing on his gillnet boat Clew and served as an officer of the American Legion. "That’s pretty much were he spent his free time. He was pretty proud of being a vet," said Harriet, who was born on Veteran’s Day and had childhood birthday parties at the hall.

Charlie was an avid basketball fan, and once played on and coached the local school teams as well as city league teams. He watched grandson James Hart play on a state championship team two years ago.

Brouillette, an Eagle from the Thunderbird House, is survived by wife Harriet M. Brouillette; children Robert of Barrow, Albert of Juneau, Judy Davis of Bothell, Wash., and Harriet Brouillette and Mary Gross of Haines; Alaska grandchildren Andee, Sarah, Adam, and Merri Davis; Theodore and James Hart; Charles and Robby Brouillette, and Zackary James.

He is also survived by four great-grandchildren and numerous nieces, nephews and cousins. He was preceded in death by siblings Henry, James, and Rita Brouillette, and by son Harry. Donations in his name may be made to the Haines Volunteer Fire Department’s ambulance service.