With a longtime interest in maritime heritage activities, Chuck Fowler grew up on the water and in boats in Tacoma and on Puget Sound.   He is immediate past president of the Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society in Seattle, and founding executive director of the Working Waterfront Maritime Museum in Tacoma.  Chuck was also founding co-coordinator of the Pacific Northwest Maritime Heritage Council of maritime organizations in Washington, Oregon and British Columbia.  He and his wife Karla have lived in Olympia for the past 35 years. 

For more than a decade beginning in 1982 Chuck and Karla owned and operated CM3 Associates, an Olympia-based consulting firm that provided marketing, fundraising and project planning services for government, nonprofit and professional service organizations.  Before becoming a consultant he was Public Affairs Administrator for the Washington State Department of Transportation and College Relations Director at The Evergreen State College.  Chuck is a graduate of the University of Puget Sound and Northwestern University, and an Air Force veteran.

As part of their community volunteer work in Olympia, Chuck and Karla joined what became the South Sound Maritime Heritage Association in the early 1980’s and as volunteers developed a new Olympia Harbor Days marketing and promotion program, including the annual logo series featuring historic tugboats.  . 

Chuck “semi-retired” in the late 1990s when CM3 was sold but has continued to be an active participant in maritime history organizations and activities throughout the Pacific Northwest for the past two decades. 

Among his many active retirement activities, Chuck is the author of two pictorial history books, “Tall Ships on Puget Sound” and “Tugboats on Puget Sound.”  He is now completing a third book in his regional maritime history series, about Navy, Coast Guard and even Air Force patrol and rescue boats which were built or served on the Sound.