JOHN LINDER: “I was a friend of Charlie's for over 30 years. We met in the early 1970s when he was the president of the Georgia Dental…”

“I was a friend of Charlie's for over 30 years. We met in the early 1970s when he was the president of the Georgia Dental Association and I was a practicing dentist and a young State legislator. Charlie never ever was in neutral, and he rarely ever backed up. It was full go ahead. The great story about him in the Army was he changed the way they were doing business, moving dentists to forward-fire bases. His commander called him and said, I want a daily report of what you are doing there that is out of the ordinary. Charlie said to him, Well, I have got a chair here. You come down here and set your own butt on it and write your own report. I just don't have time. The colonel did come down, and they changed the entire way the Army did business because of Charlie's ideas. When he got involved shortly thereafter in the Georgia Dental Association, he did the same thing. He just took charge and became president. He traveled all over the State of Georgia fighting for important things for patients' welfare. His campaign in 1994 was a joy to watch, just a joy to watch, yard signs everywhere and him moving as fast as he could from one house to the next, from one hand to the next. He was just a remarkably good campaigner.”