Charles M. Nowell, 94, passed away in the early morning hours of May 27, 2025 at the Orchard, after a long and fruitful life raising a family, sculpting, whittling, carving, replacing shotgun stocks and otherwise indulging his ceaseless urge to create.
He was born on November 2, 1930 in Kosciusko, Mississippi. His father said, “We can name him whatever you want, but, with those ears, we have to call him Mickey.” And so indeed he was “Mickey” to family and friends for his nine and a half decades on this earth.
He grew up too poor even to know that they were in the middle of the Great Depression, and he ran free all over town with his friends and his beloved dog Sandy. In high school, he had to attend Mayor’s Court after he was arrested for fighting outside the pool hall. He explained to the mayor that the altercation was in truth a fake fight he had choreographed with his best buddy William Wyndam. They proceeded to put on the show, and the mayor fell back in his chair laughing.
After earning his degree in geology from Mississippi State University, Mickey fulfilled his duty to the ROTC by serving as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army in Karlsruhe, Germany, where he almost started WW III on a midnight patrol when a towering stag with majestic antlers froze in his jeep’s headlights and he instinctively reached for a rifle.
After his service, he enrolled in the Memphis Academy of Art where classes were held in an old Victorian home. Sketching in a studio one day with the radio playing softly, Nat King Cole’s “When I Fall in Love” came on. A girl named Rose Marie Merchant, sitting nearby with her own sketch pad, sighed, “What a beautiful, haunting melody!” Mickey and Rose eloped and remained together for 43-years until she passed away too soon in 2005. They shared a rich life full of children and art, first for many years in Jackson, then retiring to Madison.
Mickey paid the bills using his geology degree working as a lab technician testing the gummy Yazoo clay that covers central Mississippi. Many evenings his children helped him take off work boots covered in it. But, as everyone who ever encountered him knew very well, he expressed his artistic passions in a prolific output of sculptures, handmade furniture and musical instruments, works of calligraphy and any random woodworking project that struck his fancy. No brief summary of his life can convey the staggering scale of his work. In his last days, he carved almost 300 elegant walking sticks, many shaped from hardwood saplings from Lobutcha Swamp. Wood always told him stories, from its life as his grandmother’s pump organ evolving 100 years later into a grandchild’s toy guitar.
Mickey is survived by his four children, Charles Junior, Mark, Kenny and Rebecca, as well as six grandchildren and two recently arrived great grandchildren.
Many thanks to the Orchard and the Arbor for their kindness and care of Mickey.
Visitation for Mickey’s funeral will be Friday, May 30, at 1:00-2:30pm, followed by the funeral and the graveside service.
Kenny Nowell 