Chuck Logan was a war baby, born in Chicago a week after the Battle of Midway in June, 1942. He knows little about his father. His parents split up when he was an infant. He knows his father's real name was Utecht, that he was a professional boxer, trainer and promoter in Chicago and that he took Logan as a ring name. According to the family story, his mom was not real comfortable with her husband's drinking and his involvement with “colorful” elements around the fight game.
Chuck’s mom encouraged him to read and draw and hoped he'd become an artist. In 1950-51 she enrolled him as a 3rd grade cadet at Georgia Military Academy in College Park, Georgia. Memories from GMA include one 8-year-old classmate crying himself to sleep when his dad was killed in Korea. He also recalls teaching himself to draw copying Joe and Willie out of Bill Mauldin's classic book of WW II cartoons, Up Front.
Chuck, age 8, Georgia Military Academy,
College Park, GA, 1950
Chuck’s mother decided to move from Michigan to Arizona in July, 1953. Driving during a rainstorm near Marion, Kentucky, the car swerved on slick pavement, went off the road and hit a guardrail next to a swamp. The backseat was stacked with heavy boxes of Encyclopedias and Logan's Junior Classics. The books drove the seats forward. Logan's mom hit the steering column with great force and was killed. He was catapulted through the windshield into the muddy water where he fortunately landed on his back. Battered from the impact, choking on his blood and unable to move, he survived by regulating his breathing to remain afloat until help arrived. Logan carries the crude tattoo — 777 — on his left forearm as a reminder of that night; July, 7th, 7:00 pm.
Chuck spent 3 years living with an aunt and uncle in Inspiration, Bowie and Superior, Arizona. Then he was shifted to another aunt for high school in Warren, Michigan, a blue-collar suburb of Detroit. It was the first time he'd ever spent more than one year in the same school. He was not allowed to play sports because athletic ability had been his dad's downfall. Obedient to his guardian's wishes, he attended her non-denominational, fundamentalist church four times a week for four years. The night he turned 18, he walked.
Chuck attended Monteith College, part of Wayne State University in Detroit. Monteith offered an experimental curriculum funded by the Ford Foundation whose mission was to expose a random sample of Michigan students to a highly accelerated liberal arts program. Wayne State had a nationally ranked debate squad and fencing team. Logan was kicked off both of them for drinking.
He then self-matriculated into Detroit's auto factories, police rosters and bars until he volunteered for the draft in 1967. (Ethical dilemma: against the war, didn't want someone else going in his place.)
In 1968, he volunteered for the paratroops, a sure ticket to Vietnam, and served 13 months carrying the radio for several small advisory teams, mainly in Dong Ha District in northern Quang Tri Province.
He earned a Combat Infantry Badge and a Bronze Star with V device.
PFC Chuck Logan, an RTO, on operations
in northern Quang Tri Province, 1968
