Virginia Beach - Charles Richard “Dick” Culpepper, 87, a native of Suffolk, a graduate of Suffolk High and Virginia Tech and a resident of Virginia Beach, died Sept. 1, 2025, with both his sons present. His rollicking life concluded two-and-a-half hours shy of an 88th birthday.

Born on Sept. 2, 1937, as the youngest of three children of the native Iowan Florence Carlson Culpepper and the native Virginian Edward Rawls Culpepper, he wound up journeying considerably, often among fellow Hokies. He visited all 50 states, fished in Alaska, golfed at Pebble Beach, wagered at a Kentucky Derby, gazed from Diamond Head and found his way to lobster in Maine and to wonder in the American West. He saw both Scandinavia and the Mediterranean, took a long walk through Hyde Park in London and marveled at Paris. His Hokies gifted him two Sugar Bowls in New Orleans, including a national-title game before which the Virginia Tech band took the field and a tear took a trip down his cheek. He had abundances in both maroon-and-orange clothing and football play-calling knowledge that always exceeded that of the coach calling the plays.

He loved bridge, soft-shell crabs, golf, wine, tutoring youth at math, oysters, casinos, hefty shrimp, building things (including a color TV in 1968), and, while at Westminster-Canterbury on Chesapeake Bay in recent years, karaoke and golf croquet. He could fix things from cars to wiring to taxes. A nuclear engineer, he worked at shipyards in Newport News and Norfolk, overhauling nuclear submarines until retiring at 53. He adored the Outer Banks where he lived a retirement dream and built a house, one of the four houses he forged from imagination to life. He reveled through the 1980s and 1990s in the Bennett’s Harbor neighborhood of Suffolk with an exhilarating group of friends who included Smiths, Norcrosses and Wises. He coached Little League baseball including both his sons, even as his utmost mastery of that art came when he helmed some young Tigers from anarchy to quality. He sang in various choirs and joined church disaster-relief trips.

Survivors include two sons and one son-in-law, Gregory Dale Culpepper of Suffolk, and Charles Richard “Chuck” Culpepper Jr. and husband Monaco Culpepper-Knapp of Palm Springs, Calif., as well as five nieces and nephews and numerous friends including his ex-wife and mother of his sons, Kay Treakle Culpepper. He was predeceased by siblings Phyllis Culpepper Welliver (Jay) and Edward Rawls Culpepper. A celebration of life will occur Nov. 1, 2025, at 1 p.m. at Westminster-Canterbury in Virginia Beach.

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