The world lost an amazing dad, husband, brother, son, and physician on Thursday, September 14, when Howard Charles
Malpass, III (Charles to many, Charlie to his family), age 44, died from complications of his acute myeloid leukemia
(AML).
Charlie was the best of us. He is known to many for his quiet, humble, and brilliant care as a pulmonary physician at UVA
Health. His specialty was interventional pulmonary and bronchoscopy, where he would work countless hours to deliver
diagnostic lung results to his patients and provide clear guidance for their next steps of treatment. As chemotherapy was
infusing on the first day of his diagnosis with AML, Charlie was calling patients back with their own good news that their
disease was not cancer, and he did so with such grace and humility. Charlie wanted the pathologists reading this to know
that his samples were always brilliant, with more than enough cells to get the diagnosis! He was well-known for his humor
and was beloved by his colleagues. Charlie’s colleagues in the medical intensive care unit at UVAHealth cared for him
beautifully at the end of his life.
Charlie would not want to be defined by his disease or by his work. He would want to be remembered for his role as a dad
to his son, Huck – a role he poured his entire heart and soul into. The month before he died, he planned the entire itinerary
for his family to go to London. The trip was such a huge success! His accolades as a father are too numerous to count, but
in the weeks before he died, he was Huck’s soccer coach; they worked together to beat the video game Shredder’s
Revenge, and they built Harry Potter Lego sets to add to their collection. He organized and hosted an epic water party for
Huck’s friends before the start of school, and they were already scheming which Halloween decoration to add to their
prized Halloween blow-up collection. Huck was the center of his universe.