Charles Lewis
Age - 101
December 1, 2023
Lieutenant Colonel (USA ret. ) Charles E. Lewis (101) passed away peacefully in the company of family members at UPMC Shadyside, in Pittsburgh, on November 27, 2023. Charles was a decorated combat veteran and a career officer, who served with distinction in Europe, in Korea, in Taiwan during the Straits of Formosa crisis, and in Laos in the early phases of the Vietnam conflict. Charles was born on May 18, 1922, in Springfield, Illinois, to Andrew L. Lewis and Irene Murray Lewis of Virginia, Illinois. When he was nineteen, after one year of college, he volunteered for the draft and joined the United States Army three months before the attack on Pearl Harbor. He was stationed at-then Camp Polk (now Fort Johnson), Louisiana, where he was assigned to a motorcycle messenger company. By age twenty-two, he had successfully completed Airborne Training and Officer Candidate School and been transferred to the brand-new 17th Airborne Division. By the end of the war, he had led men into battle in two major campaigns, Market Garden and the Bulge, where on the 2nd of January 1945, he led his platoon in a bayonet charge against Tiger tanks in the engagement later known as Dead Man's Ridge. While fighting in the nearby village of Flamierge, he was wounded and captured by Wehrmacht elements. He was held in a POW camp near the German city of Luckenwalde till the end of the war. After the war, he served briefly in the Occupation in Frankfurt before trying out the civilian world. When fighting broke out in Korea, he was recalled into the Army and sent to Hawaii to help organize a heavy weapons company. In Hawaii, he crossed paths with a childhood friend from Virginia, Margaret Jane Paschal, the only daughter of Merle Barclay Paschal and Doris Seward Paschal. They married on June 21, 1949, in a traditional service wedding, complete with dress uniforms and crossed sabers. They remained married till her death on September 8, 2013. After combat duty in Korea and promotion to the rank of captain, Charles was assigned to Fort Ord, California, first as the commander of an amphibious assault infantry company, then to Army Language School, where he studied Chinese prior to assignment to the Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) mission to Taiwan. In Taiwan, he trained infantry instructors for the Nationalist Chinese Army and advised front-line defensive elements stationed on the islands of Quemoy and Matsu, within sight of the Chinese mainland. At the completion of his MAAG assignment in 1956, he and his family were stationed at-then Fort Bragg (now Fort Liberty), where he volunteered for and was accepted into a new kind of unit, the 77th Special Forces Group. He spent the remainder of his career in the Special Forces, in the newly formed 5th and 7th Special Forces groups, with duty both stateside and in Laos. In 1963 Charles retired from active military service, completed the college education he'd interrupted in 1941, and reinvented himself as a teacher of American history, instead of a maker of it. After earning his bachelor's degree in history from North Carolina State University and a master's degree in teaching from Duke University, where he was inducted into Kappa Delta Pi, the honorary scholastic fraternity, he taught first at Needham B. Broughton Senior High School in Raleigh, North Carolina, then in 1968 he joined the faculty of Culver Military Academy in Culver, Indiana. When he retired from Culver in 1979, colleagues said that he had set up "work standards that will be most difficult to duplicate" and that his "exemplary teaching and self-discipline have been recognized by all his colleagues" and would be missed. In retirement he devoted the rest of his life to the study of history, fine woodworking, cross country skiing, the Episcopal Church, and helping Margaret fight Parkinson's Disease. Charles is survived by five children, twelve grandchildren, and a still-growing host of great-grandchildren. Services will be held Saturday, December 9th, in Virginia, Illinois. A private visitation will be held from 11:00 am to 12:00 pm at Buchanan & Cody Funeral Home in Virginia, followed by a graveside service at 2 pm at Walnut Ridge Cemetery. Memorial contributions may be made to St. Thomas Episcopal Church, 400 N. Center Street, Plymouth, Indiana, 46563, www. stthomasplymouth. org, or to Army Emergency Relief, www. armyemergencyrelief. org. The Buchanan & Cody Funeral Home in Virginia is in charge of arrangements. Condolences may be left online at buchanancody. com.Show more
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