Charles Hamilton Kable III

1938 - 2025

Charles Hamilton Kable, III

June 24, 1938 - March 3, 2025

Herndon, Virginia - Man, what a ride! Charles (Charlie, Chuck) Hamilton Kable, III was born on 24 June 1938 to Dr. Charles H. Kable Jr and Muriel Waltz Kable and was raised in Westminster, Maryland, with five lively siblings: sisters Ann, Susan, Meg, and Martha (Dolly) and brother John. As a son of Carroll County, Maryland, he had a lifelong love of crabs, shrimp, and old bay. He also had an unreasonable love of fried oysters from Baughers Restaurant and black raspberry ice cream from Hoffmans in Westminster.

He sought adventure and craved knowledge his whole life, first through reading and stamp collecting as a youngster. He then volunteered for the Air Force as a teenager, worked as a card dealer at Harrah's casino in Reno, NV, and finally had a lengthy career with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In the Air Force, he served as a survival instructor with three friends from Westminster. For the remainder of his life, he would tell stories of his experiences trekking the Sierra Nevada mountains with aircrews eating large black ants and roasted snake.

Following his service and graduation from Western Maryland College, Chuck married his best friend and soul mate, Helen, of Caldwell, ID. Together they had three kids, Sandy, Max, and Andrea, and spent 27 years overseas with eight foreign assignments: Georgetown, Guyana; Quito, Ecuador; Santiago, Chile; Athens, Greece (twice); Mexico City, Mexico; and Bonn, Germany. Through it all, Chuck got his wish for adventure. One son was the first-ever US diplomatic baby born in Guyana, his daughter was born in a missionary hospital on the slope of a volcano in Ecuador. He fished streams, rivers, seas, and oceans on three continents, bought food from black markets, stepped over dead bodies during a violent coup, participated in archaeological digs in Greece, ran imaginary races at both Marathon and Olympia, housed colleagues escaping the hostage crisis in Iran, visited countless World War II battlefields, and enjoyed multiple safaris in Kenya. One of his many talents was his ability to recall particularly delicious meals at restaurants or roadside stands on five continents. His life can easily be described as a "kaleidoscope of memories," all documented on hundreds of rolls of Kodak film turned into slides that his kids now have to convert into usable media.

Chuck was gentle, kind, classy, interesting, and adored. He had an unparalleled knowledge of facts, a love of history and archaeology, and was gifted at foreign languages, particularly German, French, Spanish, and Greek. He embraced his role as Dad by honing his dad jokes and dad sense of humor. On a safari in Kenya, a man offered Chuck 20 cows and 48 goats if Chuck's daughter married the man's son. Chuck politely declined, having quipped, "Unfortunately, my yard just isn't big enough."

Throughout his career at the CIA, he worked with colleagues to gather information known to few. He now knows the greatest secret of them all.

Chuck is survived by his children Sandy (Cathy) of Brambleton, VA; Max (Beth), of South Riding, VA; and Andrea of Reston, VA; sisters Ann and Susan, brother John, and three loved grandkids. We are confident that his reunion with his wife of 54 years, Helen, has been spectacular.

Funeral Services will be private.