Portrait of Charlie “Red” Hunt by Clay Stinnett
Charlie Hunt, the man who ran the iconic Ships Lounge in East Dallas died in early April at age 85.
In 2015 — following 40-some years as a fixture at the neighborhood dive — Hunt shut down shop, telling a local reporter that he needed to let someone else run the place after a hit-and-run accident “messed me up all over, really.” Ships closed for about a year after that before reopening under new owners.
Known to regulars as Charlie Red, Hunt opened his saloon on a Super Bowl Sunday in the early 1970s, and he had very memorable Super Bowl parties each year, according to John Slate, a Dallas archivist and historian who, for many years, made Ships his part-time home.
“He had odd rules,” Slate recalls, “like no undershirts. And no excessive tattoos, for which he required coverup. That ended up being a losing battle, of course, and he gave up.”
Charlie “Red” Hunt Sept. 9, 1937-April 3, 2023.
According to Hunt’s obituary, when he wasn’t working at his bar, he “enjoyed spending countless hours at his bar with his customers.” He also liked golf.
The popular publican had eight brothers and two sisters, served two years in the Army, married a woman named Wilma Sue in the 1950s, and they had two children, Deborah Sue Bell and Danny Charles Hunt.
Charlie “Red” Hunt outlived nine of his siblings and his son, Danny.
His family and friends, via memorial pages, remember him as “a fashionable, social, self-made person.”
Friends and patrons on social media say Charlie Red was a big part of their lives and that, under his management, Ships was a place of camaraderie and comfort, a safe harbor.
Slate says he spent “many entertaining hours with the mercurial Charlie” and that he will always remember his funny stories, the wild adventures and the distinct oldies soundtrack emitting from a well-used jukebox.
“Charlie grew up in the shadow of Bonnie and Clyde in West Dallas before it was incorporated,” says Slate, “and his personality was a lot like that no-man’s land — scrappy and untamed.”
Though Charlie “Red” Hunt has been away for a few years now, veteran tapster Pam Shaddox is still behind the bar (which, according to food and drink pundits, is one of three requirements, along with jukebox and chili-dog night, for keeping Ships’ soul intact).
His family, including daughter Deborah Sue of Trinidad, Texas and “a host of nieces and nephews and many who loved him dearly,” held memorial services last weekend at Grove Hill.
