Tom Johnson examines an unfinished carving he is working on for his grandson. -World Photo by Jolene Guzman

It is fitting people had a good time remembering the dear, departed Charlie the Tuna. Charlie’s creator, Tom Johnson of Myrtle Point, wouldn’t have it any other way.

“He’s fun,” Johnson, 71, said. “Kids loved the guy. He had a great personality.”

The 8-foot-tall blue tuna was reported missing from his place on the east side of the South Slough Bridge in Charleston on June 3. The victim of a prank gone sour, Charlie was cut into pieces by thieves who have since apologized for their actions. A wake was held for the dismembered tuna on Saturday, June 14. He was 22 years old, born in Myrtle Point.

A file folder on Johnson’s kitchen table has photos of him working on Charlie. He is wearing jeans, a white T-shirt and suspenders in the photos. More than two decades later, Johnson is wearing almost identical clothing, though he will admit to having a little less hair. He doesn’t remember all the details of how he was enlisted to carve the famous fish. What he does remember is being nervous about it. The Monterey cyprus log was donated for the big fish, and Charlie was his first carving of that size. His inspiration for the 8-foot statue was a figure in an advertisement that stood about half an inch tall.

“It scared me to death to think about it,” he said. “When someone donates a log and you have to carve it, you don’t want to foul it up.”

Johnson took his time to prevent anything from going wrong. He said he spent a good 30 or 40 hours on Charlie. The result was the big grinning fish that stood at the end of the east side of the bridge through Charleston since 1986.

“Charlie did a great job. He stood there and guarded the bridge and greeted a lot of tourists,” Johnson said.

After Charlie, Johnson carved other big wooden statues, including the Hamm’s Beer bear, a Bumble Bee Tuna and a portrait carving of a Native American chief. Johnson has created hundreds of pieces, many of which populate his Myrtle Point home and shop, along with a sizable collection of his paintings and drawings. Painting was his first art, which he studied at the University of Oregon for a number of years. Johnson ventured into wood carving with chainsaw and chisel about 24 years ago.

He has a collection of wooden interpretations of gods and goddesses from world religions. They are as scattered as his own experience with the churches he attended as a child. Having moved several times while growing up, Johnson never had much of a chance to make friends, or for that matter, to stay in one church. But his mother insisted his family go to church, any church. He walked away from that a bit bewildered.

“As a kid, I got so confused,” he said. “By the third or fourth grade, I was going to the library to check out books to see what was going on.”

Thus started a long history of studying the world’s religions — and carving them. A statue of Anubis, an Egyptian god who judged the dead, serves as a scratching post for his cat. Mayan, Egyptian and Hindu deities hold court in his workshop, located at the bottom of several flights of stairs behind the home he shares with his wife of 52 years.

He doesn’t work on large figures anymore, but he does small wood carvings for family and friends. He is working on a carving for his grandson who works in a U.S. Army hospital. On Saturday, the unfinished image of a caduceus,  symbol of American medicine, with two serpents winding around a sword, rests in the middle of his work table. It is surrounded by wood shavings and dust, chisels and tools, some of which he fashioned himself over the years.

Johnson didn’t work on Charlie in his shop. He took him up the road to a friend’s house where he could work outside. Carol Anderson said she was excited to have the fashioning of Charlie take place in her yard.

“It was just something incredible to watch him work on,” Anderson said.

She was reminded of that every time she drove through Charleston.

“I think, ‘Boy that was carved in my yard,’” she said. “I think it was really neat.”

To Johnson, Charlie wasn’t just a carving.

“He was more than a piece of wood,” he said. “He typified the people of Charleston. God bless them.”

But times have changed and so will Charlie. Loon Lake resident Ellen Keeland has volunteered to carve a new Charlie. Johnson thinks an update is fitting. Charleston is a different town now, he said. He believes much of what Charlie symbolized about Charleston — the fishing and logging industries —  have suffered and changed since the blue fish first took his position in town.

Johnson has some advice for Keeland about Charlie II: Modern Charlie should have designer clothes and sunglasses, a bike helmet, cell phone and laptop.

“That would fit the new age,” Johnson said with a smile and laugh.