It’s hard to believe, but it’s been 20 years since Mr. Charles died. If the name isn’t familiar, you might remember him as the Berkeley Waving Man. That’s what some people called him, while others called him Charley Wavesalot, but most of us just called him Mr. Charles.
His real name was Joseph W. Charles. He was part of the great African American exodus from the Deep South who came here during World War II to work in the Richmond shipyards, building the ships that helped win the war. After the war he worked as a stevedore at the Oakland Naval Supply Center. He retired Oct. 5, 1962.
The next morning, he stepped outside his home on Berkeley’s northeast corner of Oregon Street and Martin Luther King Way (then named Grove Street) and embarked on the mission that made him famous: waving to the passing cars and calling, “Keep Smiling!” and “Have a GOOD day!”
The neighbors thought he was crazy, and somebody called the police. When the cops arrived, though, they quickly sized up the situation and said, “Go ahead, Mr. Charles. Keep waving as long as you want.”
So he did: every morning, rain or shine, for exactly 30 years until Oct. 6, 1992. In the process, he became beloved. Soon, people were driving miles out of their way so they could wave to the Waving Man. That included two mayors of Berkeley, Loni Hancock and Shirley Dean, who were political rivals but united in their admiration for Mr. Charles.
“He was a joyful person who loved people, and we loved him right back,” said Hancock. “Seeing him every morning was a great way to start the day.”
She wanted to have a life-sized statue of him erected on that corner in his signature pose, waving to the traffic. The city’s Public Works Department vetoed the idea, though, saying it would cost too much. So they settled for naming the tennis courts across the street after him instead. You can still read the sign, saying in big letters, “Joseph W. Charles Tennis Courts.”
I don’t know if he ever played tennis a day in his life, but that wasn’t the point. The whole idea was to make the sign big enough that he could read it from his living room window. His game was baseball. As a young man he played in the Negro leagues as a second baseman for the Lake Charles (Louisiana) Black Yankees. He even batted once against Satchel Paige when the great pitcher came through town on a barnstorming tour. He struck out on three straight pitches.
“But at least I got a foul tip,” he always said proudly, “which was better than anyone else did that day!”
He also served as a surrogate grandfather for the neighborhood children, who used his front yard as their playground — much to the relief of their parents, who knew they could count on Mr. Charles to watch over them.
On the day the tennis courts were dedicated I walked with him across the street to the ceremony, and we passed through a group of teenagers who were trying their best, as teenagers will do, to look as tough as possible. As soon as they saw who it was, though, they immediately reverted to their 7-year-old selves and started calling to him, “Keep smiling, Mr. Charles! Have a GOOD day!”
Mayor after mayor issued proclamations in his honor no fewer than seven times. He was the grand marshal of both the annual Berkeley-Albany Solano Stroll and the “How Berkeley Can You Be?” parade.
He died in 2002, just a few days short of his 92nd birthday, the whole city went into mourning, and it has never stopped missing him. He even has his own Facebook fan page,”Friends of the Berkeley Waving Man,” where people from all over the Bay Area and world share their favorite memories of him.
On March 22 — what would have been his 112th birthday — some of these friends will gather in front of his house from 7:30 to 9:30 a.m. (those were Mr. Charles’ hours) and wave to the cars. I guarantee a lot of drivers will wave back. If you can join them, you’ll be more than welcome.
P.S. — I’ve been writing about Mr. Charles for so long that a lot of people assume I “discovered” him. Even Mr. Charles thought so, but do you want to know the true story? One day I turned on “The CBS Evening News” with Walter Cronkite, featuring an “On The Road” segment by Charles Kuralt, who said, “We’re in Berkeley, California, where a man stands on the corner in front of his house and waves to the passing cars every day.”
Keep smiling. And have a GOOD day.
Martin Snapp can be reached at catman442@comcast.net.