Charles Fernley Fawcett
| Charles Fernley Fawcett | |
|---|---|
| Born |
December 2, 1915 Waleska, Georgia |
| Died | February 3, 2008 (aged 92) London, England |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | Co-founder of the International Medical Corps |
Charles Fernley Fawcett (2 December 1915 – 3 February 2008) was a wrestler, resistance worker, soldier, airman, film star, film maker, and co-founder of the International Medical Corps. He was a recipient of the French Croix de Guerre and the American Eisenhower medal.
Charles Fernley Fawcett was born in Waleska, Georgia, where his mother had been caught in a snow storm and died when he was six. His family was of old Virginian stock, whose family tree included Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Having been orphaned at an early age, Fawcett and his younger brother and two sisters grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, in the care of their aunt. Here he attended Greenville high school for three years where he learned to wrestle and play American football.
Aged 15, Fawcett became involved in an affair with his best friend's mother. He remarked, "If that's child molestation, I would wish this curse on every young boy." The end of the affair made Fawcett contemplate suicide, and he left the United States to travel to the far East, working his passage on a number of steamships.
By 1937 he had returned to America and stayed for a time in New York City before making his way to Washington D. C., where he was taken in by his cousin, who happened to be an assistant United States Postmaster General. Here he ended up wrestling to make a living. Then in 1937 he boarded a ship outside Montreal bound for France, where he worked as an artist’s model and again as a wrestler.
After the outbreak of World War II he tried to join US Intelligence but his services were declined, so he briefly joined the Section Volontaire des Américains - the ambulance corps. He was on his way to North Africa to join the Free French when he heard about Varian Fry, who would go on to rescue over 2,000 Jews from Vichy France with the help of a handful of people, Fawcett among them. Among the most famous people they rescued were Franz Werfel, Marc Chagall, Heinrich Mann and Hannah Arendt.
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