The Best Obituary Ever – Charles Fawcett
I didn’t know Charles Fawcett, but I have to tell you, if everyone could have an obituary like this then the world might be just a bit hipper.
Fawcett died on Feb. 3 of this year a man with a life fully lived and a unique history at the age of 92.
Why is this man Unusual? Well, he did more in one lifetime than most folks do in one. I’m thinking he was a man with nine lives times nine.
Whoa.
Well, check this out:
His unlikely – some would say unbelievable – life was informed by an impulse to stand up for the underdog mixed with a thirst for glamour and adventure. Fawcett charmed everyone he met with tales of swashbuckling intrigue and good deeds.
In 1980, following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, he helped film the conflict between the Russian forces and their enemies, the Mujahideen – footage that was pivotal in persuading the United States secretly to arm and fund the tribal warriors fighting the Red Army.
Fawcett’s film featured the glamorous, ultra-conservative Texan socialite Joanne Herring, portrayed by Julia Roberts in the current Hollywood blockbuster Charlie Wilson’s War. In typical Fawcett style, he had alerted her by sending her a note he had scribbled in crayon on the back of a child’s notebook: “Come immediately. Bring film equipment. The world doesn’t know what’s going on here.”
But that’s not all. During WWII, he has paper marriages to six Jewish women who were in concentration camp to automatically give them automatic American visa status.
But I think the greatest sentence from his obit is this one:
In Paris Fawcett also took part in the rescue of a group of British prisoners-of-war who had been placed under French guard in a hospital ward by the Germans. By impersonating a German ambulance crew, Fawcett and a comrade marched in at 4am and ordered the French nurses to usher the PoWs out into the yard. “Gentlemen,” he announced as he drove them away, “consider yourself liberated.”
“You’re a Yank,” said a British voice.
“Never,” came Fawcett’s lilting southern burr, “confuse a Virginian with a Yankee.”
I’d never heard of Fawcett before. My bad.
H/t: Ironically Fark.
“Never,” came Fawcett’s lilting southern burr, “confuse a Virginian with a Yankee.”
A gentleman is always a gentleman, y’all, even when he’d rather punch out an ungrateful damn Limey.
Thanks for the link, dahlink. We still have time to live excellent lives!
I had the pleasure of knowing Charlie Fawcett. When we first met 20 or so years ago, we had dinner at Annabel’s in London, and on many occasions thereafter when I would be in London. Every year he would visit Los Angeles and again we would meet up with Charlie and April.
Occasionally, stories of such epic proportions take on a life of their own, but all the stories about Charlie are real…it was a treat to have known him, and I will miss him.