Most mornings, Charles Hope likes to sit on the fourth-floor balcony of his apartment overlooking the foothills of San Jose and lose himself in a weighty historical tome. Studying history, Hope says, can contextualize the day’s events and show us how to avoid the mistakes of the past.
He especially enjoys reading about history’s great wars, and “how, if ever, we could avoid them in the future,” he said. “But as long as ignorance prevails in the world, probably not.”
Earlier this year, mounting back rent threatened the 83-year-old retiree’s quiet life of learning and reflection and got Hope thinking about all the things he had already overcome to get here. Now he faced a question: Could he do it again?
“Like his last name, he was hopeful, hopeful that he could find some other way,” Crum said. “And he finally did.”
Hope was born in Great Falls, Mont., in 1940. He grew up on the family farm, where they grew wheat and barley outside of a little town called Cut Bank. His family never had much, but he didn’t think of himself as poor.
“Population about 3,000. It’s a good place to grow up. … The wind blew all the time,” he recalled. “I never got a birthday present or a Christmas gift.”
Farming isn’t easy, but Hope didn’t shy from the challenge. If there was something he needed, his father told him he had to work for it, instilling a work ethic that would serve Hope well throughout his life.
Hope studied banking and finance at the University of Montana — “one of the best schools in the country, by the way,” he added — where he enlisted in the Air Force in the lead-up to the Vietnam War. After two years of ROTC, a failed eye exam ended his dream of becoming a fighter pilot. Hope joined the Navy Reserve, then learned the Army would help pay for his educational pursuits and transferred.
“So in a roundabout way,” he said, “I was kind of a member of the Air Force, the Navy and the Army.”
Midway through his Army training, Hope’s father died. The man the family hired to keep the ranch going took advantage of Hope’s elderly mother, stealing grain and rustling cattle until Hope was granted leave by the Army to return home and help his mother.
Attracted to the Bay Area’s “more liberal and forward-thinking environment,” Hope moved there in 1977. He got involved locally in Mensa — a society of people with high IQs — and was thrilled to be in a chapter with a membership in the thousands after meeting with the 10 or so members in his home state of Montana, he said.
“He’s a real go-getter,” Crum said. “Don’t let his age fool you. … He’s absolutely sharp, and he’s an advocate for himself.”
Since then, Hope has lived a life full of curiosity and pursuit. He owned and operated a printing shop, a real estate firm, a property management company and insurance agency, always looking for opportunities to expand his horizons, said Natasha Crum, Hope’s Department of Veterans Affairs case manager.
“He’s a real go-getter,” Crum said. “Don’t let his age fool you. … He’s absolutely sharp, and he’s an advocate for himself.”
In 2021, Hope’s rent increased to more than his monthly retirement income. He was able to take advantage of the COVID relief funding offered that year to scrape by. By 2023, though, that funding had run out, and Hope’s back rent began piling up.
He was eligible for an increase in his housing subsidy, but that wouldn’t help with his back rent, Crum said. So he began applying for relief from charitable organizations, including the Chronicle Season of Sharing Fund, a nonprofit administered by the Chronicle and the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund that is committed to ending hunger and homelessness in the nine-county Bay Area. Hope was accepted into the program, and Season of Sharing helped him make a sizable dent in his back rent.
“Like his last name, he was hopeful, hopeful that he could find some other way,” Crum said. “And he finally did.”
Hope doesn’t regret leaving Montana for the West Coast, despite the myriad challenges he has faced over the decades. His family and friends have long since passed on, he said. San Jose remains his lone connection to the life he fought so hard to build.
“Life is an ongoing opportunity to increase your knowledge,” he said. “The most dangerous thing in the universe, believe it or not, is ignorance — at the root of all evil and all the problems in the world.”
Reach Daniel Lempres: Daniel.Lempres@sfchronicle.com
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