Charles L. Apel, November 21, 2022
Summary from Wired Magazine: Charles Apel’s resume: drops out of Yale in 1967 to become a hippie and get high with Jim Morrison. Lives in the jungles of Colombia to avoid the Vietnam War draft. Eventually pardoned by Jimmy Carter. Fathers seven children. Returns to school and earns a BA in 1999 and a chemistry PhD in 2003. Now works in the Astrochemistry Lab in the Space Science Division at NASA researching the origins of cellular life. Associate editor of Biosystems.
Through Mem’ry’s Haze … In 2016, a Yale student named Graham Ambrose wrote a 25-page paper for his History 134 (“Yale and America”) class on some aspects of the life of Charles Apel (JE ’69). The paper is summarized and reprinted here. The paper used Apel’s life and time at Yale to highlight the conflicts between growing use of drugs on campus, starting as early at late 1965, and official Yale (Masters, Campus Police, Kingman). There’s even a section on the God Squad.
In Mike Folz’ memoir (1965 / 1966 / 1967) several sections talk about how Chuck’s and Mike’s paths crossed and some of the things they shared. Open the book and search for “Apel”.
In 2007, Chuck mellowed and re-connected (with Mike’s encouragement from Mike and Kent Bicknell) writing:
“I look back at my time at Yale with a great deal of fondness and often wonder what would have happened if I had continued there instead of dropping out of the physics program. In the summer of 1966 I enrolled in Harvard summer school to make up for my D in German at Yale. There I met Timothy Leary who introduced me to LSD. By the following summer I was a longhaired hippie living with the Jefferson Airplane in San Francisco and having the time of my life. These were happy and magical times, hanging out and partying with Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and the Grateful Dead. However, I was on the run for draft evasion and eventually had to leave the country to avoid the FBI. They were hot on my trail and wanted to put me in prison for four years without a trial. I took what money I had and my pregnant wife and went to Colombia to live in the mountainous rainforest with the indigenous people there until the war was over.
”President Carter gave me a pardon and I returned to the San Francisco Bay Area to raise my growing family. I have seven children (now 14 grandchildren) and supported them by learning to be a florist in an affluent neighborhood in Marin County. When our nest was finally empty my wife and I decided to go back to school. I received my AA (biology) from Santa Rosa Junior College in 1996, my BA (molecular, cellular and developmental biology) from University of California Santa Cruz in 1999, and then went on to get my PhD in biochemistry, also at UCSC, in 2003.
“Since then I have worked at the astrochemistry branch of the space science division at NASA/Ames, for two years as a National Research Council postdoctoral fellow, and for the past year as a Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute Research Scientist, also here at Ames. My work has focused on issues concerning the origins of life and astrobiology. I am presently teaching biochemistry at San Jose State University and am considering a tenure-track position there. My wife is now teaching English at three local community colleges after receiving her MFA from Mills College.
”For fun I do a lot of hiking, kayaking, and camping. I also have a band called the Guru Daddies, which plays at local clubs. Our sound has been described as ‘hypno trance, world beat, rock and roll’ and we’re getting pretty good for a bunch of old-timers, if I must say so myself. The best way to contact me is by the e-mail above. My home address here in Silicon Valley is 118 Walnut Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94085.“ Great to have you back, Charles.
Upon learning of Chuck’s death, Kent Bicknell (‘69/’70) and Mike Folz submitted this for the Class Notes: “The class lost a brilliant creative force with the death of Chuck Apel from prostate cancer in mid-November, 2022. Chuck came to Yale from Columbus OH. Accepted with scholarships to MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Yale and Colgate, Chuck chose Yale owing to the beauty of the campus.
By the end of freshman year, he had turned on and tuned in with a small number of classmates who were destined to drop out in the middle of sophomore year. Leaving behind – but inspired by – courses such as Chinese Literature in translation, with its mystical poems of Han-shan from Cold Mountain, Chuck headed to the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco where he soon became a legendary presence among counter-culture folk heroes. After all, which other classmate can say he made the white-fringed leather jacket that Jimi Hendrix wore at Woodstock?
In his late forties, Chuck returned to college – a journey which culminated a few years later with a Ph.D. in Astrobiology from UC Santa Cruz. (See publications.) He worked at the Astrochemistry Lab in the Space Science Division at NASA, researched the origins of cellular life, published a number of scientific articles and was a professor of chemistry at San Jose State.
While Chuck was at Yale a relatively short time (Sept 1965 – March 1967) he deeply impressed those he met. As his J.E. hallmate, Jon Rubin, shared, “He was such a smart and sympathetic person; incredibly intense at the same time he was detached. The last words he wrote me were, ‘I live in a 250 sq ft. house with a composting toilet in another shed. I have to boil water to wash dishes etc., but, hey – I pay no rent!’”