Chuck Mawhinney, who died in 2024 and served in Vietnam, had the most confirmed kills of any Marine Corps scout sniper

BAKER CITY — The Oregon Senate passed by unanimous vote a resolution honoring the late Charles “Chuck” Mawhinney, the longtime Baker City resident who holds the Marine Corps records for confirmed kills by a sniper.

Senate Concurrent Resolution 28 passed Monday, June 9. The Oregon House of Representatives’ Rules Committee had a public hearing and work session on the resolution on Thursday, June 12. The committee voted 7-0 to adopt the resolution.

The bill’s chief sponsors include Sen. Mike McLane, a Republican from Prineville whose district includes Baker County, and Rep. Mark Owens, R-Crane, who also represents the county in the Legislature.

Shane Alderson, chairman of the Baker County Board of Commissioners, submitted written testimony supporting the resolution.

Mawhinney’s wife, Robin, was at the state Capitol on June 9when the Senate approved the resolution. She said it was an honor to be in the floor of the Oregon Senate that day.

“It was a recognition for the accomplishments of Chuck Mawhinney and his time served in Vietnam for 16 months in-country as a Marine,” she said. “It is always special when a rural Eastern Oregon individual is recognized. It’s an honor I feel like many more veterans should have been given for time served. This includes veterans then and now.”

Robin Mawhinney also thanked Sen. Todd Nash, of Enterprise, for co-sponsoring the resolution.

Chuck Mawhinney, who grew up in Lakeview and moved to Baker City with Robin in 1981, had 103 confirmed kills in Vietnam as a Marine Corps scout sniper.

Mawhinney, who told his tales always grudgingly and always by deflecting attention away from himself and toward his fellow Vietnam veterans, died Feb. 12, 2024, at his Baker City home, 11 days shy of his 75th birthday.

Based on dozens of hours of conversations with Mawhinney, Jim Lindsay’s 2023 book — “The Sniper: The Untold Story of the Marine Corps’ Greatest Marksman of All Time” — describes in detail Mawhinney’s Vietnam experiences, but it also explores his entire life, starting with his rambunctious childhood in the remote country near where Oregon meets California.

In an interview with the Baker City Herald a couple days after the book’s release, Mawhinney, with the gravelly chuckle that was one of his trademarks, explained how the book came to be.

“Well crap, I couldn’t get out of it.”

The book, with a forward written by Mawhinney, was something he never envisioned, or indeed wanted.

“I never, ever planned on doing a book,” he said during that interview.

Mawhinney was something of a contradiction, Lindsay said.

Despite his instinctive dislike for talking about himself, Mawhinney had a powerful presence.

“He had a charisma about him,” Lindsay said. “He was the kind of guy that you’d want to be around. But he didn’t try hard to be that. He’d listen to anybody else’s stories before telling his own.”