Charlie Anos is 63 years old. He came to the Mansion during the worst of the pandemic about two years ago. I didn’t meet him until June of last year.

He worked his whole life as a gym teacher.

(This is part of a portrait series of Mansion residents I’m doing. My idea is to humanize the residents, people most of us never see or come to know. There are many great people there, which is one way of getting to know them. Eventually, we’ll put the photos up on the Mansion walls)

But his lifetime passion was and is fly fishing.

His nickname at the Mansion is “Fish God.” His father was a New York firefighter working in the Bronx.

Charlie grew up just north of New York City. He came to the Mansion after suffering a stroke.

He and I were scheduled to fly fishing together last fall, but he couldn’t go, and neither was I.

We plan to try again once the weather settles, perhaps next month. I have plans also to take him to the Fly Fishing Museum in Manchester, New York. The Museum sent me two free tickets for Charlie and me.

Charlie needs a walker to move around. I’m looking for a flat accessible spot by the Battenkill River nearby. In November, we purchased a fly kit for him. I got him five or six books on fly fishing.

He admits he hasn’t read them, but he has looked at all of the photographs and opens them often.

I realized that Charlie sometimes needed to speak slowly during the interview, so I slowed down.

There are at least a dozen fishing poles in Charlie’s office and charts and posters of different fish.

Charlie says he was married “three or four” times in his life; he isn’t sure. There were no children. It just didn’t happen, he says.

He said the marriages didn’t work out, smiles and shrugs. Charlie spent 15 years in South Carolina, where his love of fishing deepened. He mainly fished for flounder and spot tail bass; he caught fight that weight 70 or 80 pounds.

Charlie has a dry sense of humor. He gets low, he says, when he thinks about fishing but is comfortable at the Mansion. He says he is well cared for.

Charlie is something of a loner. He doesn’t make friends easily.

Sometimes he eats in his room and isn’t seen for a day or two. He can often be found sitting outside in all weather with his New York Yankee cap, thinking. I like talking to Charlie; we get along well with one another.

The only thing he needs, he says, is a rack for him to hold his fishing rods. It’s on the way.

I’m looking forward to taking him fishing, and I’m curious about it. I’ve never gone fishing in my life.