Today's Featured Biography
Bruce Charnov
Bruce Hirschl Charnov was born on November 16, 1946 to Abraham Charnov and Winona Belle (Fuller) Charnov in Grand Rapids, MI. His brothers Eric Lee Charnov (a 1997 MacArthur fellow in evolutionary biology) and Craig Steven Charnov followed in the next 31 mos. The family legend was that originally he was to be named Hirschel Bruce, but a spelling-challenged Asst. County Clerk encounter his mother before his father, a fortuitous event for which he was immensely grateful for the rest of his life. Upon his parents’ divorce when he was 12, his mother moved the family from Adrian, MI to Ann Arbor because she knew there was a college there and “my boys are going to go to the college up the hill” and Bruce graduated from the University of Michigan in 1968 with a B.A. in English literature and a low draft number that precluded going to law school, a dream that would have to wait 22 years. During his time at Michigan Bruce became interested in Judaism, and discovering that becoming a student at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York City carried with it a draft deferment, he embarked on a rabbinical course of study but a Navy recruiter intervened and convinced him to accept a commission as an Ensign in the Navy Reserve Student Chaplain Program in January of 1970. He completed an M.A. degree in Jewish Studies in 1971 and was ordained a Rabbi in 1972 where upon he entered active Navy duty having been promoted to LTjg in 1971 and LT in 1972. His active duty assignments included the Naval Training Center, San Diego, the 3d and 2d Marine Divisions. Leaving active duty after 5 and ½ years, subsequent assignments included being temporarily recalled to active service at Marine Corps Recruit Depot–Parris Island, serving as the Chaplain Corps historian and Deputy Director of the Naval War College – Off Campus Branch in Washington, D.C. Naval Reserve assignments included being Commanding Officer of 5 chaplain support units, serving as Atlantic Submarine Command (SUBLANT) Force Chaplain and being on the staff of two Naval Reserve Readiness Commands (NY and TX). He retired at Naval Station– Dallas in 1998 as a CAPT USNR.
While serving in San Diego, Bruce completed a Ph.D. in Leadership and Human Behavior at United States International University (now Alliant International University) with a doctoral dissertation exploring the effects of military enculturation process (‘boot camp’) on dimensions of personality, which the Navy has ignored ever since – an academic achievement that allowed him to accept a position with Yankelovich, Skelly and White, a Madison Avenue social–values and marketing research firm, which he would leave in late 1979 to assume a faculty position in the Department of Management and General Business (now Management and Entrepreneurship) at Hofstra University (now the Frank G. Zarb School of Business) in Hempstead, NY. Gaining tenure in 1987, he would retire after 30+ years of teaching including six years as Department Chairperson as an Associate Professor Emeritus at the end of the 2010 academic year, where he was awarded the President’s Medal for Distinguished Service. Bruce had earned an MBA (With Distinction) specializing in Human Resources Management at Fairleigh–Dickinson University in 1981, and in 1987, was the only tenured professor to teach early in the morning and in the early evening, leaving his days free to attend Hofstra University’s Maurice Deane School of Law, earning his Juris Doctorate (With Distinction) in 1990 where he also served as Associate Editor of its law review), the same year he passed the NY Bar Exam and was licensed to practice law in the state and federal courts. Taking a two-year general leave from his faculty position, Bruce practiced law in New York City branch of the Texas law firm Fulbright and Jaworski (now Norton Rose Fulbright), but returned to his tenured professorship in 1992.
To demonstrate scholarly contributions prior to being granted tenure, Bruce co-authored several academic journal articles on arbitration and labor issues, as well as books on professional academic ethics, organizational intelligence and the Barron’s Business Review series book on Management which would see five editions and remain in print since 1987. After returning from his leave of absence to practice law, he co-authored a book on modern law firm management and designed and taught a new course entitled “Litigation and Alternative Dispute Management for Managers” for the next 20 years, hoping to convince young management students that they never wanted to find themselves in a court room.
As a tenured professor he found that he had great control over his schedule and was regularly available for Navy Reserve assignments outside the United States, service that found him in Japan, Italy, Sicily, Spain and Iceland – experiences which he relished. He also found the freedom to explore new areas and from 2000 onward, he published 192 papers, monographs and books on the Autogiro, the precursor of the helicopter and Igor Bensen’s Gyrocopter. These included the 2003 seminal From Autogiro to Gyroplane: The Amazing Survival of an Aviation Technology, a 2012 1400+ page 4-vol. History of the Popular Rotorcraft Association ¬ The First Fifty Years and the Revised Autogiro/Autogyro/Gyroplane/Convertiplane Bibliography (4 vols – 1238 pages) London, England: The Royal Aeronautical Society 2022 (National Aerospace Library Digital Collection). 2008 was a banner year as he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society in London and received a Telly Award (History and Biography) for the film Gyroplane Refrain which was based on his 2003 book and starred news reporter and anchor Rolland Smith, formerly of KSND in San Diego. A passionate believer in preserving history in aviation museums, Bruce donated items to the San Diego Aerospace Museum, the American Helicopter Museum & Education Center (Brandywine, PA), the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (where aircraft models he commissioned for a 2003 museum exhibit that accompanied a highly successful Hofstra University From Autogiro to Gyroplane: The Past, Present and Future of an Aviation Industry international conference are currently on exhibit), The Royal Aeronautical Society (London England), The Norfolk & Suffolk Aviation Museum (Flixton England) and the National Aviation Museum (Lithuania) among others.
After retiring from Hofstra in 2010, Bruce and the love of his life, Sophia Gordon-Charnov (who turned him into a dog-lover), relocated to San Diego where they had both previously lived. Married in 2004, they enjoyed extensive travel to Ireland, Iceland (where flying a gyroplane over an untouched forest was a spectacular highlight), several times to England (where both Bruce and Sophia got to fly with the late Wing Commander Ken Wallis who, as ‘James Bond’, flew “Little Nellie” in the 1967 James Bond film You Only Live Twice”), Scotland, Portugal, Spain, France, Russia and the capitols of Eastern Europe as well as Israel. One of the attractions of San Diego was the opportunity for all-year gardening, a passion of Sophia, while Bruce resumed a youthful passion for chess, eventually becoming secretary of the San Diego Chess Club. Additionally, he volunteered for 5 years with the San Diego Police Department’s Retired Senior Volunteer Patrol (RSVP) program before transferring to the similar program with the San Diego Community College Police Department.
His children children and grandchildren include: Dr. Miryam Esther (Charnov) Benovitz (Don-E) and son Aharon Chayim Charnov (Avigail Appelbaum–Charnov) and grandchildren Ariella, Yonaton, Mindy, Michal and Akiva Benovitz and Daphna, Noa and Meital Appelbaum–Charnov.
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