Charles Eric Hernadi

If anyone knew how to live in the moment, it was Charlie Hernadi.

He fully enjoyed each day as it came, and it took very little to make him smile. A warm cup of coffee. A pancake breakfast. Anything by the Beatles. A greeting card in the mail, especially with pictures of boats on the front and one or two dollar bills tucked inside. Dancing to Richard Simmons’s “Sweatin’ to the Oldies.” Swimming laps at the Santa Barbara YMCA. Touring the Santa Barbara Harbor with the salt air blowing in his face.

Charlie lived large and had a full life. Charlie competed in Track and Field in the Special Olympics while living in the Midwest in the 1980s, rode horses with a therapeutic organization after moving to California, flew on a glider plane after cancer treatments, and sea kayaked with his expert friend and instructor, who deftly paddled him around the harbor and over the waves at Santa Barbara’s beaches. Charlie made friends everywhere he went, even during his frequent hospitalizations for pneumonia and other illnesses.

Charles Eric Hernadi was born July 14, 1966 in Vienna, Austria, and moved with his parents to Colorado, upstate New York, and Iowa before settling in Southern California in the late 1980s. Charlie attended public schools in Rochester, NY and Iowa City, IA, completing his high school program in 1987. In California, Charlie lived at Peppermint Ridge in Riverside County before moving to Hillside House in Santa Barbara, and finally to Devereux Supported Living Services in Goleta.

Charlie enjoyed daily activities and outings at the Alpha Resource Center in Santa Barbara, going for walks along Shoreline Drive with his parents, and grabbing a coffee or hamburger at any time of day.

Charlie passed away on Father’s Day, June 16, due to complications from covid-19 and pneumonia, while receiving comfort care at Cottage Hospital Santa Barbara. His devoted mother was with him at the time of his death. Charlie is survived by his parents, Paul and Virginia Hernadi; his brother, Christopher Hernadi; his sister-in-law; his nephew; and numerous relatives in the United States and abroad.

To memorialize Charlie, the Hernadi family requests that donations be made to the Alpha Resource Center in Santa Barbara.