Charles “Professor X” Xavier

Charles Xavier could make a stranger laugh on the worst day of her life, and he proved it more than once. He was smart, he was solid, and he never met a joke he didn't tell at least twice. Everybody who knew him called him Professor X, and the name fit him the way his unicycle did, which is to say completely, and with more balance than anyone expected.

He was born May 6, 1926, in Indianapolis, and life carried him from there to Virginia Beach, Virginia, and later to Germantown, Maryland. Wherever he landed, he found a way to make people laugh and a way to make himself useful, usually in that order. He loved running around in circles, riding that unicycle of his like it was the most natural way for a grown man to get anywhere, and he never seemed to tire of the bit.

What he loved most was people, one at a time. He listened to everything anyone brought him, and he always wanted to help. That was the whole shape of him.

One memory says it best. A young woman crying on the side of the street, a stranger who stopped, an ice cream bought for no reason except that she needed something good to happen to her that day. His scoop hit the pavement before hers did, and instead of trouble, it became the kind of night people still talk about, the two of them laughing until it stopped feeling like a bad day at all.

He is survived by his brother, Magnus, his son, Wolverine (Traxia), and his daughter, Jane. He joins his father, James, and his mother, May.

He was kind, he was funny, and everyone who ever cried on a sidewalk near him remembers exactly why.