Charles S. Rockwell

Originally from Santa Ana, citizen of the world, and a long-time resident of Santa Barbara, passed away on Wednesday, May 27, 2015. He was 82 years old.

A scholar, professor, world traveler, economist, diver and sailor, Charles was acknowledged by everyone who knew him as a true Renaissance man. He was also a life-time learner and writer. When he was 11 years old, he had already written his autobiography. Unlike most 11 year-olds, he actually had stories to tell, including a near death experience on his bicycle and some insightful and wry comments on his family: "My father is Polish-Catholic and very stubborn. My mother is a Dutch-Reformist who liked to argue. So you can guess how that affected my thinking."

Charles continued his love of education, and received a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1963. From there he went on join the faculty at Yale University later returning to the University of California at Irvine. He dedicated many years to developing methods for predicting financial events using statistical analysis, applying his work to areas such as commodities and stock market. Even in his final years Charles never stopped learning. He developed several successful statistical systems for trading in the stock market. He continued his education by taking online classes from the Open Yale program and attended photography and computer classes at the local community college. His computer files were filled with lectures, videos, and papers written by scholars across the world on subjects ranging from demography to music theory.

At a young age Charles developed passion for travel. At 16, Charles and his parents took a round-the-world trip by airplane, a journey nearly unheard of at that time. This was only the beginning of his world travels, which lasted his entire life. Even his last years found him bicycling across China and venturing to Antartica.

At his home in Santa Barbara, Charles kept a world map on which he'd placed pins marking the places he had traveled. Some areas of the map were so filled with pins that you could barely make out the paper underneath. Even the oceans were scattered with markers, sometimes indicating islands and atolls so small the pin obscured the spot.

Near 1970, Charles purchased a 43-foot wooden sailboat named the Fair Winds (nicknamed the wooden submarine because so much water splashed on the deck the family often felt they were underwater). Within a few years, the family had practiced enough with short trips to be ready to for longer, transoceanic voyages - traveling everywhere from the remote French Polynesian Islands (including Thor Heyerdal's Fatu Hiva), to the inland water ways of Canada and blue seas of the Greek Islands, stopping for extended periods of time to live in places such as New Zealand and and Fiji. Thanks to their father's adventures, while most of their peers were watching television, the Rockwell children watched scenes across the globe.

His passing leaves a profound vacuum in the lives of his family and friends. He was their first phone call if they had an arcane economics question, needed a shoulder to cry on, sought a recommendation for an excellent book, or just felt like having a lively conversation about politics and the general state of the world.

Charles Rockwell is survived by his wife, Jolinda, his children, Pamela, Charles, Geoffrey, and Anna, his grandson Jesse, his step-granddaughter Jessica, and by a talkative, bright green parrot named Pepe who, like Charles's parents, is stubborn and likes to argue.

His family invites you to make a contribution in his name to the charities that were close to his heart, particularly the Animal Shelter Assistance Program (5473 Overpass Rd, Santa Barbara, CA 93111) and C.A.R.E. 4 Paws (P.O. Box 60524, Santa Barbara, CA 93160-0524).