Daughter of Galveston man with savage obit tells why she did it

The obituary of Galveston’s Leslie Ray "Popeye" Charping has made the rounds after it was discovered on the Carnes Funeral Home website. The obit was biting and honest in tone and many people couldn’t believe that someone could be so callous to a family member.

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Over the past week the obituary of Galveston’s Leslie Ray "Popeye" Charping has made the rounds after it was discovered on the Carnes Funeral Home website. The obit, biting and honest in tone, went so viral that it crashed funeral home's website.

Many people couldn’t believe that someone could be so callous to a family member. Others thought it was a joke or prank of some sort.

A member of the Charping family told host Michael Berry on “The Michael Berry Show” on Tuesday morning that she chose to tell the truth about her father in the obituary rather than sugarcoat a life that hurt others.

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Daughter Sheila Smith was on the phone with Berry for nearly an hour fielding questions about her father, who was a welder by occupation “but didn’t do a whole lot of it.”

Smith said that the obit came from a place of healing. She said that the funeral home showed her examples of obits that were full of happiness and complete lies.

“A week after he passed I sat down and began working on it. I was somewhat blocked and everything I was going to write was going to be a lie,” she said. “He hated a liar and he would appreciate this.”

She recounted to Berry the arrests for domestic violence, the threats to her life and the lives of others over the years. He had shot up various houses in his rages, according to Smith.

In the obit Smith wrote that Charping lived “29 years longer than expected and much longer than he deserved.”

“He was in such bad health with drugs and drinking that it became an inside joke that he wasn’t going to live much longer,” Smith said. Cancer finally killed her father.

She said that violence was a constant during her childhood, and that work was scarce for her father because of his surly attitude.

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“There was always a blow up. He would get fired or get mad and quit,” Smith said. One of the get rich schemes mentioned in the obit involved Charping making figurines out of nuts and bolts. All the family had to show for it was buckets of unused supplies.

“He thought he could spend $200 and a make a million,” she said.

Smith told Berry that it took counseling to even be in the same room with her father without wanting to lash out at him.

She said that she did cry when he died. A nurse told her that he had made his peace with the Lord on his deathbed and was remorseful and even kind to the caretaker. This confused and saddened Smith as Charping had spent most of his life being a devout and vocal atheist.

“He was so hateful to us but so nice to a complete stranger,” she said.

Smith said that the obituary was an effect of her feeling duped over the years, especially at the end of his life when her father was comfortable being engaging with a nurse and not his family.

For all the pain he cause others in life, Smith said didn’t want to see him die the way he did from cancer.

“There still exists a love for a biological parent,” Smith said.

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She confirmed that there were no memorial services, as noted in the obit, because that was what he wanted.

Although the obit is a by-product of the pain he caused, she does admit that it is humorous in places. Smith said that she and her brother had to use comedy and humor to break the tension of the situations that her father put them into over the years.

Everybody that knew him, friends and family, seemed to agree with what she wrote, even though some who didn’t deal with Charping think it’s unfair to a dead man.

“They support it and say that this is real and that he earned it,” Smith said. No one has said anything negative to her face, even her mother who was married to Charping long ago.

Charping’s cremated remains are still at the funeral home, Smith said. She has plans to pick them up soon.