William Gregory Carman of Choctaw, Oklahoma, was a loving husband and father, a natural charmer, a profoundly fair and hardworking public servant, a talented handyman, a builder and a taker-aparter, a lifelong collector of knowledge and Snoopy memorabilia, and the best person most of us will ever know.
Born on May 22, 1958, in Louisville, Kentucky, to William Terry and Anna Louise Carman, he was the fourth of six children. One year after graduating from Bishop David High School in 1976, he enlisted in the United States Air Force and served for 27 years. He retired as a Chief Master Sergeant and superintendent of the 552nd Maintenance Group at Tinker Air Force Base. After six weeks as a retiree, during which he cut the grass daily, he went back to work as a civil servant, retiring fully in 2018. In the workplace, he was known for his preternatural ethics, his fairness as a supervisor, and mostly polite mischief—like giving people nicknames regardless of their rank in relation to his own. His contributions to our country and our servicemen are too many to put in words here.
He met his wife Chae while stationed at Osan Air Base in Korea. They wed in 1980 and shared 40 years of happy marriage, raising three daughters in a family full of love, laughter, really good food, and, three times over, teenage girl angst (sorry, Dad!). Greg and Chae operated as two halves of a beautiful partnership, their intelligence and talents in concert, their respect and admiration for each other evident in what they did both together and apart. If you ever experienced Greg’s practicality and stoicism, he got that from her. If you’ve ever witnessed her perfect comedic timing, she got at least some of that from him.
He was the kind of dad you’d choose for yourself if you got to pick. He was never, ever too busy for his kids—never too tired to play with them, to teach them, to offer advice, or to explain to them why their check engine lights were on. After a brief initiation period, he treated their partners as his own, too, because he knew they made his daughters happy. He loved kids and was great with them, and becoming a grandpa meant the world to him.
Greg’s hobbies included singing loudly even if he did not know the words, talking to ham radio operators all over the world, fixing broken things—or sawing broken things in half if they could not be fixed—and listening to records at questionable volume through tube radios he’d repaired…but only when Mom wasn’t home.
Even after his cancer diagnosis in 2017, he retained his rapier-like wit and penchant for finding the humor in any given moment and then gifting it to the people around him. His generosity was unending, his faith in God steadfast, and his moral compass was aspirational. Ask anyone who knew him, and they could tell you his accidental catchphrase, which he lived up to daily: “Because it’s the right thing to do.”
He passed away on September 29, 2020, at home, surrounded by his wife and children. He was 62 years old.
Greg is survived by his wife Chae and daughters Hye Young Collins, Becky Carman, and Ashley Twitchell; sons-in-law Stanley Collins and Scott Twitchell; and grandchildren Isabella, Sophia, and Elijah
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