Charles H Turner

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I was born in Paris Crossing, Indiana, a tiny farming town, on November 13, 1923.

I was the youngest of four children of Fred Sr. and Laura E. Turner. My father was a British-born.

He became naturalised as a WWI U.S. Pilot. My mother was a Kentucky Mountain woman whose ancestry came from the feuding Hatfields of Harfield-McCoy legend. I was one year old when our family moved West. First to Colorado, then to Arizona. My father was an Evangelist but he couldn't support a family so he tried farming and various business opportunitunities, which were few as the great depression came. I remember times when we had nothing but boiled chicken feed to eat. My father and two older brothers labored hard on the farm to raise pinto beans and were devasted when the harvest was worth only $1.00 per hundred pounds. In desperation, my father went into politics. He won election as a Justice of the Peace and later as a county assessor, which eventually led to his death in a fatal auto accident. My mother had died two years earlier so I became an orphan. Fortunately, my sister, who was married, took me in.

It proved to be the stepping stone to a lifetime career as a journalist. I started as a reporter in the Jr. High newspaper and ended as editor. Then in high school I repeated the steps. It all happened in Eureka, California where my sister's husband was a commercial fisherman. Tragedy struck our family in 1940 when he died of cancer, leaving five children and me, 17. I worked as a retail clerk while finishing high school, giving my earnings to my sister. Shortly after graduating I enlisted in the U.S. Army in which I served three years: half of it overseas in Europe. I was wounded in the Battle of the Bulge and spent two weeks in the U.S. Army hospital in Bar-Le Duc, France. My award of the Purple Heart Medal, two Bronze stars, Air Medal and other awards earned me enough points for early discharge and I came home in December, 1945. A month later I took advantage of the G.I. Bill and entered college, graduating in January, 1949, with a Bachelor of Journalism. I joined United Press, a wire service and served as a staff correspondent for nealy five years in Phoenix, Boise, Helena and Honolulu. I left U.P. and I joined the Honolulu Advertiser because my pay was far below the Advertiser's, which wasn't that big ($75.00 a week vs. $105.00) except for a short time when I made an abortive move to become a journalism teacher and 1.5 years with the associated press. I was with the advertiser until early retirement in 1985. During "retrirement" I worked briefly for Unity House, the state labor department and the East-West Center. During the period between 1959 and 1989, I was the Hawaii correspondent for the New York Times, obviously while not on duty with the Advertiser.