Charles W. Major ’48

Charles W. Major ’48 died August 1, 2018, in Bangor, Maine, surrounded by family. He enlisted in the Navy at age 17, was part of the V-12 program at Dartmouth, and was commissioned at age19 from Notre Dame Midshipmen School. He was recalled during the Korean War, overall serving 33 months of sea duty on destroyers in the Pacific, North Atlantic, and Mediterranean. He completed his formal education with a Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee in 1957 and subsequently taught at the Rochester (New York) School of Medicine and then at the University of Maine for 33 years until his retirement in 1992. He married Marie Henderson of Brooks, Georgia, before being shipped out in 1951. They had 61 wonderful years of wry humor and love while raising a family and traveling the world. He fought for civil rights all his life, was active in Anderson County, Tennessee, during the desegregation crisis at Clinton High School in the 1950s, and was a driver for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference during Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral in Atlanta in 1968. He was active politically on a regional and national basis and worked on campaigns for various Democratic candidates. He was a delegate to many state Democratic conventions and on several platform committees, notably during the contentious Vietnam era. He is survived by his three children and their families, including 10 great-grandchildren.