“I’m proud that I helped get people inspired,” Charles Thomas, known widely as Ground Chuck, said as he leaned back in his bed and looked at an art piece he planned to finish during hospice. “They may not even realize that I’m a driving force, may not recognize it. But that doesn’t matter; I don’t care about that. There’s some cool stuff out there, and I try to keep my stuff as original as possible. And I don’t plan on stopping.”
The piece he was staring at was canvas with a silver and green glyph design, just one of dozens of projects he worked on even while he struggled with severe pain and multiple visits to the hospital. Thomas’ hospice care was a grassroots effort, helmed and assisted along the way by friends that he had made during his decades as a fixture in the Midtown arts and music scene.
“I think everybody that pulled together really wanted Chuck to live the way he wanted to live, and die the way he wanted to die,” said Brandy Jean Curry, a local musician who took over running Thomas’ hospice care in his final weeks. “Chuck brought together so many of us; some of us hadn’t seen each other in years, some of us were friends of friends. It wasn’t one person or two people, it was all of us. When I was asked to help and to be Chuck’s medical power of attorney, I don’t think I could have done it without the support of everybody involved.”…