A photo of the Charles Mecke, food and beverage flight chief for the 374th Force Support Squadron at Yokota Air Base, Japan, is displayed during his on-base memorial service, March 1, 2024. (Seth Robson/Stars and Stripes)
YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan — Friends, family and coworkers in colorful sports jerseys gathered Friday at the Friendship Chapel to remember Charles Mecke, manager of clubs and restaurants at this airlift hub in western Tokyo.
The Baltimore native, husband and father to two girls died Feb. 14 at age 51 of cancer of the larynx, said his widow, Jean Mecke.
At Yokota, the globetrotting chef had worked as food and beverage flight chief for the 374th Force Support Squadron with responsibility for 300 employees.
He was due for promotion soon to civilian deputy squadron commander, Lt. Col. Jordan Hayes, the squadron commander, said during the memorial.
The late Charles Mecke, food and beverage flight chief for the 374th Force Support Squadron at Yokota Air Base, Japan, poses with his family in this undated photo. (Jean Mecke)
Hayes and others recalled a man with a keen sense of humor.
“We figured, what’s the point of being serious all the time,” Jean Mecke said at the service. “Laugh your way through.”
She and the couple’s daughters, Annabelle, 11, and Ainsley, 6, wore Baltimore Orioles baseball shirts to the service. Her husband was a die-hard fan of the team along with the Pittsburgh Steelers football team and Manchester United soccer team, she said.
In his spare time, Charles Mecke was a snowboarder who with his family visited Sapporo in northern Japan for the annual snow festival, Hakuba in mountainous Nagano prefecture and Osaka, his widow said. They had planned a trip for late February.
The couple met while working on an Alaska cruise ship; Mecke was a cook.
Their military life together started in 2010 at Randolph Air Force Base, Texas, where Mecke took a civilian job at the Officers’ Club.
From 2015 to 2018, he managed the Navy’s Terror Club in Singapore. It is named after the British warship HMS Terror and, at one time, featured a pirate statue, Mecke told Stars and Stripes in September 2020.
The late Charles Mecke, food and beverage flight chief for the 374th Force Support Squadron at Yokota Air Base, Japan, poses with daughter Annabelle in this undated photo. (Jean Mecke)
The club often hosted transient crews, including hard-drinking Australian and New Zealand sailors who celebrated ANZAC Day there with a haka war dance, he said.
At Yokota, Mecke managed the Officers’ Club, one of the first places where personnel were allowed to socialize after the Air Force relaxed restrictions imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We do offer a quality product,” he told Stars and Stripes at the time. “We are able to provide that to our airmen and their families and that is what we are trying to do even now with reopening.”
Mecke was quickly promoted to flight chief at Yokota and devoted himself to making things better for others, Hayes said.
“He probably would have hated that we made such a big deal out of this,” he said.
