Tribute To Charles Columbus Shaw

Little known facts about Charles Shaw in reply to a letter from one of his children.

In thinking back, Charles had a lot of leadership skills early on. When he was inducted into military service at Ft Mac, they gave him the choice of what branch of service he wanted to serve in. He chose the Marines. He was put "in charge" of a group that were traveling together to the Marine base in San Diego, California for his basic training. His later service was in the South Pacific until the end of the war in 1945.

Charles Shaw served two years in the Marine Corps from 1943-1945. I think his leadership qualities must have been recognized because he only had a High School education at the time.

Charles, like most Marines, as the Marine hymn states, was “proud to be member of the United States Marines.” He served in the Marine Corps, Semper fidelis in World War II in the South Pacific.


“Always faithful“ was more than a motto to Charles and to his buddies and also to the wives and widows of these men, who do not question that they (not we) were indeed the “greatest generation.” In other words, we respected each other.

When he was a teenager, Charles wrote the "love letters" for many of his buddies. I can testify...he was good at it! Before we were married , he wrote to me every week. When he was away in the Marine Corps, he wrote several letters each week. I am sorry we did not keep the letters.
Another thing your daddy did as a teen ager which shows his uniqueness was "adopt" a child at the Methodist Children's Home. There had been something presented in church about the need. So Charles asked to "adopt a child" and spent some of his "hard earned money" on toys and clothes for the child they assigned him. I suspect many if not most of those who chose to participate in the "adopt a child" project of the church were people older and with more money.

He, as you know, was a wonderfully tender hearted man. And a worker!He delivered newspapers as a young boy. Later he had a Dry Cleaning route where he went around from house to house and collected clothes his customers wanted cleaned, took them to a Dry Cleane Service in Conyers. Later in the week he went back to Conyers to get the cleaned clothes and delivered and collected the payments. He made only a pittance but every little bit helped.

As soon as he was old enough, he went to work for Calloway Mills. He made the amazing salary of 25 cents an hour. As was common in those depression years, he gave all his paychecks to his Dad and Mother to help with household expenses. He did this right up to the week we were married.

Your questions have started me thinking about WHY we did not keep his Marine stuff together. It was not a time when one thought about family history as much as they do now. Mainly we did not think of family history because there was not leisure time then as now.

We lead such a busy life with him taking advantage of the Veterans Bill of Right to go back to school and finish college and then going for 3 years more of Seminary and such busy pastorates which he continued with love and committment after two heart attacks and bi-pass surgery and until death.