Lt. Colonel Charles Edward Turk, the son of the late John Henry Turk and wife Gladys Shaw Turk, was born in Canton, Ohio, in 1940. He attended public school in Alliance, Ohio and delivered papers from an early age to fund his involvement in the Boy Scouts. He rose to be an Eagle Scout in the 1950s and traveled with his troupe cross-country by train to Irvine Ranch, California, to the 1953 National Jamboree.  He was an amateur radio operator starting in his teens and kept his call sign active for his entire life. In 1962 he graduated from Miami University of Ohio, where he studied mathematics and engineering.

In 1962 he became an officer in the United States Air Force. He would go on to serve for 33 years and become the commander of the 270th Engineering Installation Squadron. While in the Air Force, he was involved in a number of critical missions, including the SAGE Continental Air-defense system that influenced the development of computer networks and the internet, the AWACS, Airborne Early Warning and Control System development project, the SR71 supersonic plane project, and AFTAC, the secret Cold War mission in the Hawaiian Islands to collect electromagnetic pulse radiation from Russian and Chinese atomic explosions for scientific analysis. Additionally, he served a tour of duty in the Vietnam War as an advisor to the South Vietnamese Air Force and worked to build a Radar Station.

In 1962 he married Patricia Byland also of Alliance Ohio, who worked for Eastern Airlines. They had two sons, John Douglas Turk, an architect in Portland, Maine, and Stephen Louis Turk, a professor of Architecture at the Ohio State University.

Colonel Turk was a man of duty who led his life in service to his family and nation. He was a quiet man who always put others before himself. He was a lifelong baseball fan and liked to read mystery and spy novels. For many years after retirement, he enjoyed working with computers, a lifelong interest that began with the earliest vacuum tube computers he encountered in the Air Force. Later in life, he traveled to a number of countries, including Russia, that he spent the better part of his life defending against to understand the countries and their peoples.

He is survived by his wife, two sons and three grandchildren, Isabel Ann Turk, the Director at Parsons Memorial Library of Alfred, Maine, Veronica Rose Turk, a Senior Product Marketing Manager of New Ipswich, New Hampshire, and John Louis Turk, a student in Portland, Maine.

A memorial and burial will be held at a later date in the family cemetery in Ohio.