He picks up another snapshot, holds it close to his eyes and squints. Yep. That's him, standing on his head at age 85.

His whole life is there on the table, all laid out in pictures:

Family portraits with his parents and five siblings. Formal team photos from high school and college. Individual snapshots in football and basketball garb. Pictures in midlife accepting awards.

A photo taken in 1944 shows him in the gym, gripping the parallel bars and levitating his lithe, muscular body horizontally from the floor. The kind of thing an Olympic gymnast would do.

"Until five years ago, he still swam at Nautilus three times a week and lifted weights," his daughter said.

At 98, age has finally caught up with Charlie Thom.

Now, acquiescing to frailty, he has settled into a quiet routine at the Meadowbrook Acres Nursing Center near Charleston.

But people haven't forgotten the life before this one, the students he inspired and helped, the standard he set, the contributions he made despite long odds against him.

In late January, during Support Our Seniors Day at the Culture Center, Thom received a "Remember Me" award from the West Virginia Health Care Association, the trade group that represents more than 130 long-term care facilities in the state.

Staff from each facility submitted candidates for the award based on their life stories. Thom was one of five chosen for the honor.

Born in 1912, the son of a barber, he grew up on the West Side, on Ohio Avenue. He had two older brothers and two sisters, one older, one younger.

 The Thom boys all played sandlot sports, a foundation for the passion that would fuel him for the rest of his life.

Life was never easy for Charlie Thom, especially as a youngster. He was born with a deformity that has challenged him for all of his 98 years. A harelip and cleft palate disfigured his face and hindered his speech. In those days, surgery offered little help.

Family members say classmates treated him well. "I don't remember anybody making fun of Charlie," said his 95-year-old sister, Jane Adkins of Bradenton, Fla. "Everyone seemed to love him and respect him."

"His two older brothers would beat the crap out of anybody who bothered him," said his daughter, Carol Thom. "And he learned early on to take care of himself."

He didn't talk about it much, but the defect apparently bothered him more than anybody knew. "He was very conscious of his mouth and not being able to speak distinctly," Adkins said. "He wasn't too forward. He knew he had this deformity, so he didn't burst in on things."

When he was 12, he read a magazine article about a surgeon in Virginia who corrected deformities like his. He knew his parents couldn't afford the operation.

So, without a word to anyone, he slipped off and hitchhiked to Virginia.

Thom can't tell the story himself. Age has aggravated the speech impairment. He talks in a way that only those closest to him can understand.

Thom's family knows the story by heart. Hitchhiking to Virginia at 12 years old? You don't forget a thing like that.

"He left after school one day," his sister said. "Word got around that he had hitchhiked to the hospital in Virginia. My brother, Johnny, decided to go over there to see if it was true. He found Charlie consulting with the doctor."

When the doctor called Thom's parents for permission to operate, they said they did not have the money. Thom offered to send money from his paper route and pay more whenever he could. Finally, the doctor took pity on him and did the surgery.

"And Charlie did pay him pack," his sister said. "Johnny brought him home. Mother and Daddy didn't scold him too much because they knew he had gotten to the age where he knew he was different from everybody else. They knew he felt sorry for himself."

The surgery helped, but not enough. Thom struggled through school. "Speech was always a problem," his daughter said. "He had to work hard for people to understand him."

In sports, they understood him just fine. At Charleston High School, he lettered in football, basketball and track. He especially enjoyed pole vaulting (the poles were bamboo back then). Later in life, he started a pole vault clinic for youngsters.

He graduated from Charleston High in 1931. The Army wouldn't accept him because of his birth defect, so he applied for a job at Carbide.

He worked there for nearly nine years. "He and his best friend were working with chemical vats on the island," his daughter said. "His friend opened a cylinder that he thought was empty. It was full of acid. The acid splashed out and killed him, right in front of Dad. He walked out of the plant and never went back."

He enrolled in Morris Harvey College, now the University of Charleston, and majored in education. He wanted to teach. He went to Morris Harvey from 1943 to 1948 while working as athletic director at the YMCA. His wife, Dorma, helped support him as he earned his undergraduate degree and a master's from WVU.

He started teaching at Marmet Junior High School where he coached all sports and started a traveling tumbling team. He also worked as an athletic official. "Sometimes we'd get $5 for a game," he said in a 1981 newspaper story. "Sometimes we'd get $3. If there wasn't any crowd, we didn't get anything."

After seven years at Marmet, he moved to Horace Mann Junior High to organize the school's physical education program. Known for his gymnastic prowess, he added gymnastics to the curriculum and formed a tumbling squad.

Leon McCoy, the new football coach and athletic director at Charleston High School, brought him to CHS as a phys ed instructor. He established a nationally recognized weight program there.

He spent 10 years at CHS, then took over the phys ed program at Lincoln Junior High. In 1977, he retired.

For years, he officiated at the state track meet, almost as well known in that role as his older brother, "Rat."  He also served for years as a Boy Scout Scoutmaster.

He taught swimming to the elderly at a rehabilitation center and taught gymnastics for Stonewall Jackson and Winfield community schools,

  "He reached a lot of kids through physical education and athletics," his daughter said. "He had plenty of reason to gripe, but I never heard it."

"I'm very proud of Charlie," said his sister. "He did so many things for people. Everybody loved him."

When he learned of his award from the health care association, his daughter said he responded with characteristic modesty: "They must be hard up," he told her.

Reach Sandy Wells at san...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5173.