Chuck is from Charleston, WV. He is the son of Charles Mandt and Virginia Nearman and he has one brother Bob who, like Chuck, is an accomplished pianist. Chuck grew up helping in his father’s restaurant and playing piano at his mother’s insistence.  His mother was music major in college and played the piano beautifully.  Chuck finished college and ROTC by 1964, during this time he paid his college expenses playing the piano with local orchestras. Being raised in a Christian home, he also taught a 5th grade boy’s Sunday school class while in college. Before going off to active duty in the Army, he married his high school sweetheart Ruth Branscome. He served as a platoon leader at Ft Devens MA, a detachment commander in Vietnam, and the reserve center commander in Dover, Delaware. 

 

After Vietnam, he went to Florida to get a M.S. in Math at Stetson University.  Ruth taught school at Deland Middle and studied graduate physics at Stetson. Chuck played piano in Daytona Beach Resort area on weekends. From there, they went to Delaware where he taught high school and college math for 10 years and worked on his PhD.  Ruth was busy making a family as she gave birth to four beautiful children in five years after teaching for 3 years.

In 1977 Chuck had a chance to return to West Virginia and work for IBM. He was in sales, marketing, and management for 15 years before taking an early retirement. He spent the last several years as an independent consultant on large computer based projects and managing sales force automation implementations. During all of this time he has continued to play the piano and keyboards professionally and for his churches. An accomplished keyboard musician he currently plays the synthesizers and piano at First Baptist Church in Douglasville Georgia where he and Ruth have been members since 1990.