Charles R. Pankow

Charles R. Pankow, age 86, of Pompton Lakes passed on Sunday, May 12, 2019.

He was born to Gustave and Jannety Pankow on the kitchen table in the family home in Wyckoff. He graduated from the Ramsey High School with the Class of 1951.

As a young man during his high school years he worked part-time at the Grand Union Grocery store as a clerk and packer and for Sinkway Plumbing in Glen Rock as a plumber’s helper. After high school he worked at the Broadway Camera Shop in Paterson as a route salesman selling cameras film, and delivering film processing.  He later worked for the Monahan & McCann Stone Company in Newark first as a laborer and after one month he became an overhead crane operator.  When worked slowed he was laid off as all non-union employees were and he worked for a short time at the Glen Rock gas station before being drafted into the US Army. He was drafted in 1953 and served with the 148th Infantry Group attained the rank of Sergeant and the responsibility of an Infantry Company First Sergeant before being honorably discharged in 1955. After his service he attended and graduated from the Newark College of Engineering (N.J.I.T.) with a degree in Electrical Engineering Technology with the Class of 1962.

After graduating from College Charles worked for the Orange & Rockland Utilities based in Spring Valley, New York.  He started as a Transmission and Distribution Lineman then as a Working Line Foreman, Supervised ten Radio Dispatchers, worked as a System Operator managing transmission lines, Chief District Operator, Transmission Operations Trainer, and final as a Generation Scheduling Supervisor having retired in 1994. In his retirement he served as a consultant for Noram Energy Services and  Tracabel Energy both in Houston, Texas. He was never one to let grass grow under his feet and throughout his working years he did side jobs such as painting houses, electrical work, trimmed trees, cleared lots, and with his wife Roberta they were apartment superintendents collecting rents and doing general maintenance at the complex.

Charles met his wife Roberta Botyos on a blind date to the Bear Mountain Inn in Tomkins Cove, New York. This dinner dance turned into a loving and devoted marriage of sixty years.  They married on October 20, 1956 at Saint Anastasia Church in Teaneck and drove to Florida for their honeymoon. Actually they were supposed to go from Florida to Cuba but she got so badly sunburned they canceled the excursion to Cuba.

Charles will be lovingly remembered as a patient, kind, generous person who could be tough when he had to.  His children remember his hard line stance of curfews. If he was sitting silently in the rocking chair at the top of the stairs you knew you were in for it.  He had a hilarious sense of humor, was loving, loyal, and a dedicated family man. He loved to golf and was a master at the barbeque grill.  When it would inevitably rain at a family gathering he would set up the barbeque at the edge of the garage entrance.  

He was the loving husband of the late Roberta C. Pankow (d.2016); loving father of Carol Pankow of Oak Ridge, the late Nancy Brennan (d.2013), Suzanne Gaffney and her husband Raymond of Hamburg, and Amy Haggerty and her husband Dean of Wantage; he was the cherished grandfather of ten grandchildren and the much loved brother of his late siblings Rose, Fred, William, and Ed.

In lieu of flowers memorial donations to the VNA - Visiting Nurse Association - who rendered wonderful loving care to Charles in his final days would be greatly appreciated. (if you click on the blue text for VNA you will be directed to the donation page of their website.)