Charles Faucher

It is with great grief that we announce the passing of Charles Alfred Faucher on Wednesday January 5.  He was 87.  He died peacefully, surrounded by family, after a long and courageous battle with valvular heart disease. Born in Detroit on September 27, 1938, he was the second oldest of six children born to Greg and Vermelda Faucher.  Charles lived a life rich with creativity, a reverence for the natural world, and an unwavering love for his family.  

When he was very young, his family moved to rural Grosse Isle, Michigan.   There, he enjoyed the splendor of the natural world.   He enjoyed winters ice skating with his siblings on the frozen canal that ran behind their house to the Detroit River.  In warmer months, he spent time investigating the woods of the island, once fashioning a canoe that he paddled through the same waterways (see photo). 

He attended the Maryknoll Seminary in Clarks Summit, PA, for his freshman year of high school, but realized early on that a life in the clergy was not a life for him.   He returned home and enrolled in and eventually graduated from St. Patrick’s High School, in Wyandotte, MI, where he played quarterback on the varsity football team.  He completed his undergraduate work at St. Joseph’s College in Collegeville, Indiana and earned a master’s degree in Philosophy from Boston College.   In between, he taught Aristotelian Philosophy for a year at the Jesuit College of Languages at the University of Baghdad, Iraq.  When the job was over, he and a group of fellow ex-patriots famously drove a Land Rover through the Syrian desert to Turkey, and eventually all the way to Europe.  One hundred miles in, they discovered they’d been driving with the emergency brake on. 

Back stateside, Faucher worked briefly in social work in the Greenpoint, Brooklyn Housing Projects, during which time he met his first wife, Joellen Sheehan.  They were married in Astoria, Queens, in 1966.   Not long after, the Fauchers moved to Philadelphia where he took a position as editor for Media and Methods magazine. But, he was a maker at heart, and he soon left the corporate world to study woodworking at the Philadelphia College of Art. 

Charles and Joellen had two children, Carl Krantz, and Emilie Alice.  In 1975, after a brief chapter in Taos, New Mexico, the family settled in Shirley, Massachusetts, where Faucher began his wood working career in earnest, building custom kitchen cabinetry, bringing together his love of design and his lifelong connection to the natural world. 

Faucher’s first marriage ended in divorce. In the early 2000s, Faucher, eager to design wood art that went beyond cabinetry and client specification, became interested in wood turning.  Around the same time, he moved to nearby Pepperell, with his partner Pamela Worden.  Here they built a work studio where he would devote his craft exclusively to wood turning. He developed a unique “nested ring” technique to create complex surface designs including non-repeating asymmetric patterns. His work won him national recognition, including at the 2013 Smithsonian Craft Show where he won first prize for design.  A catalogue of his work can be found at charlesfaucher.com.

In addition to repurposing nature into art,  Faucher was passionate about preserving the  natural world.  As chair of the Shirley Greenway Committee in the mid-1990s, his leadership established the foundational strategies for land conservation that the town continues to use today. His actions focused on systematically mapping the town’s natural assets and defining clear criteria for land acquisition. The initiatives directly led to the permanent protection of hundreds of acres of open space in Shirley, including the Hunting Hill Conservation Area and various riverfront buffers.

Charles and Pamela enjoyed a small cottage they owned on a lake in the Monadnock region of New Hampshire in the town of Harrisville. Here, he continued to savor experiences in the natural world, including hiking, kayaking, canoeing, as well as the many opportunities to enjoy fine theater and music. 

He is survived by his longtime partner and wife Pamela Worden; his former wife, Joellen Sheehan; his son Carl (Eileen), his daughter, Emilie (Jamie); his sister Donna Bialach; his brothers Paul and Philip, and his three grandchildren, Gustar Angulo (Alison),  Fiona Lavinia Faucher, and Sophia Louisa Faucher. 

His brother Gerald predeceased him as did his sister Angela. 

Faucher was a member of the First Parish Church of Groton, where a memorial service will be held this spring. 

Memorial gifts may be made in Charles’ name to Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music, P.O. Box, 217, Sullivan NH 03445, or at applehill.org.