Comedian Chris Rock’s older brother, Charles Ledell Rock, was an alcoholic who lived in a homeless shelter and died penniless of pneumonia in February, 2006, The National Enquirer claims. A promising young man, Charles had an MBA and was the only one of the eight Rock children to hold a college degree. He ruined his marriage and career with heavy drinking and was rarely sober. He ended up so down on his luck that he was working as a maintenance man in a hospital and living in a homeless shelter when he fell ill. He was just 52 when he died alone in the hospital and it was nearly a month before one of his coworkers identified the body.

Chris tried to save him many times, and in 2005 he paid for him to go to rehab, but Charles dropped out and continued his downward spiral:

Chris’ large family – he has seven siblings – has long been tortured by Charles’ stormy life.

“Charles spent a lot of years in jail for robbery, breaking into cars and such,” said a family insider.

But Charles was highly educated. He is the only one of the Rock siblings to graduate from college. In fact, he held a master’s degree in business administration. Eleven years older than Chris, Charles was initially a role model for him and his siblings as they grew up in Brooklyn, NY…

But as Chris’ comedy career took off, drinking took over Charles’ life.

“His drinking ruined his married. He’d come to family functions drunk. He’d call up Chris and his other brothers dead drunk and ramble on. He had a lot of friends in Harlem, and that’s where he’d spend a lot of his time, drinking,” said the family insider.

Over the years, Chris kept in close touch with Charles, urging him to get sober, reminding him he had people who loved him dearly. But his words were ignored. Chris simply could not save Charles.

Charles’ business career went down the tubes. And for the last seven years of his life he was a maintenance worker at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan.

“Chris stepped in and tried to help Charles by paying for him to go to an alcohol rehab residence. That was in 2005. But Charles walked out of that residence and never came back,” said the insider.

Although he still went to work each day at Bellevue, Charles wound up living in a homeless shelter on Ward’s Island in New York’s East River, where nearly a thousand of the city’s down-and-out sleep.

On January 29, 2006, Charles became deathly ill and was taken from the shelter to a Harlem hospital. He had pneumonia. It worsened, and on Feb. 4, 2006, Charles died.

[From The National Enquirer, print edition, October 8, 2007]

That’s incredibly sad and my heart goes out to his family and to Chris. I can’t imagine having a family member who you just can’t help like that. I read a very good memoir a few months ago by Jeanette Walls, the MSNBC The Scoop journalist who used to dish the gossip but recently retired to focus on writing books. It was called The Glass Castle and was about her difficult life growing up as one of four children with neglectful parents who ended up homeless on the streets of NY City. No matter how much she tried to help her parents, and she and her siblings were successful and able to provide for them at that point, they didn’t want to leave the streets. Sometimes people just can’t accept help or change, and it’s got to be heartbreaking for those who love them.

Contrary to the National Enquirer’s report, Wikipedia has Chris listed as having five younger siblings and does not list a Charles Ledell among them. There is a picture in The Enquirer of a young Chris with a man identified as Charles, so it’s possible the source for Wikipedia was incorrect.

The sitcom Everybody Hates Chris is loosely based on Chris Rock’s life growing up in Brooklyn and now on its third season on UPN. His young character has just two siblings on the series.

Photo of Charles Rock’s memorial service announcement, below, is a scan from The National Enquirer. Chris Rock is shown on 2/25/06 at the NAACP awards, thanks to PRPhotos. It was hard to find a picture of him where he wasn’t smiling.