Charles Kenneth “Ken” Covey

TEMPE – Our beloved dad, Charles Kenneth “Ken” Covey passed away on May 9, 2020. A Tempe resident since 1966, Ken was born February 12, 1924 in Denver, Colorado to Anne Naomi Turner and Charles Lincoln Covey. He graduated from Fort Hill High School in Cumberland, Maryland in 1942 and moved back to Denver, where he was called to duty, joined the Navy Seabees Construction Corp., and served in the Pacific Theatre during WWII on Guam and Kwajalein among other places. After his discharge he returned to Denver where he met June Ann Calvert and they married in 1947. He studied Electrical Engineering at Denver University, earning his BS degree there. Ken’s working career included surveying drilling sites for Schlumberger, working on the Titan missile guidance system for Martin Marietta, producing application manuals and editing the in-house publication for Motorola, until his retirement in 1992.

Ken’s favorite pastime was gardening, at which he excelled, planting rose bushes which are still producing beautiful flowers to this day, growing many different fruit trees, creating a dragon topiary, and having a front lawn of Dichondra grass, no mean feat in the dry Arizona climate. Ken was preceded in death by his wife June on October 25, 2000, but is survived by his five children, April Lea Fennell, Kristi May Covey, Kerry Ann Covey, Janel June Yanez and Blake Edward Covey, and his beloved grandson Artemis Raphael Yanez. He fostered in all of his offspring a passion for reading, learning, science, the outdoors, a sense of humor and really bad puns. We miss him dearly and forgive him for “PUNishing us”.