Charles E. Winter – M.A. Colorado College, Ed. – Biology, 1938.
M.S. Univ. of Maryland., Microbiology, 1945
Ph.D., Univ. of Maryland, Microbiology, 1947.
Charles was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado Sept. 9, 1914. He grew up there, later attending Colorado College while working as a janitor in the library and the administration building for which he received slightly over $100.00 cash per month, plus free tuition for his 6 years in school.
In June, 1937, he and Betty Schaefer, both members of the Colorado Springs SDA church, were married. A year later receiving a Master’s degree in Education and Biology, they went to Union College in Lincoln, Nebraska, where Chuck (as everyone called him) intended to take a summer of Bible courses. Instead, the first day on campus, he was offered the job of Laboratory Instructor in Professor Frank Marsh’s Biology Department. All during that year, the college paid his tuition to also take more Biology courses at the University of Nebraska in downtown Lincoln.
Before that school year ended, Chuck and Betty received a call from the General Conference to go to China to the China Training Institute, to head the Science Department – especially the pre-medical program. At that time, the college was refugeeing in Hong Kong due to the rather recent Sino-Japanese war. Consequently, we did not go to Hong Kong until after a year’s language study in Shanghai. At first Jerry and Rose Christensen were our only classmates. Several months later, Grace Dale, wife of Dr. Charles Dale, joined us. That was truly a “fun” year, not only a happy learning experience but a year of getting acquainted with the wonderful people of that entirely different culture. Our four Chinese language school teachers and we mutually loved to play volleyball together at recess time. After school we’d often go for a bicycle ride in the green countryside.
By June of 1940 we were on our way to a home at scenic Clearwater Bay, located eleven miles out in the country from Kowloon.
It was not to be a settled, peaceful time there in Hong Kong though. British army planes, day by day, practiced overhead for the eventuality of war with the Japanese. We grew quite used to them and school carried on in its routine fashion.
On Thanksgiving Day all the missionaries gathered at the Stubbs Road Compound to celebrate with a pot-luck dinner together and an afternoon of socializing. Christmas was similarly celebrated, and also uneventually.
When May, 1941 came, the General Conference urged that women and children should return home to the U.S. Actually, the American Consulate in Hong Kong felt that the political situation seemed a little better, so the men decided to stay by and finish the school year for the sake of the students. It was a sad group of women and husbands who parted on the wharf that May evening!
By fall political conditions appeared to be a lot less tense so the fellows decided to begin the next school year, thinking that they could jump on a plane or boat and leave, if necessary – famous last works! The world knows what happened on December 7, 1941 – Pearl Harbor! Hong Kong was bombed the same day, December 8, over there. There followed 9 months of absolutely no communication between Chuck and me. I did not know if he was dead or alive but, in my heart, I felt the assurance that God would keep him safe.
Before the war, Chuck had signed up with the Hong Kong Medical Department that, in case of war, he would help them. Those ensuing months are a book in itself. It may be summed up best by the final paragraphs from a report by N.F. Allman, Provost of American Communal Council, Stanley Interment Camp, Hong Kong, August 5, 1942, addressed to A.E. Southard, Esq., American Consul General, Hong Kong.
“Practically every American in Hong Kong played his part well and never failed to respond generously when called upon for any service and it would not, therefore, be fair to single out any individual for special mention. One cannot help, however, mentioning the American truck drivers and the debt of gratitude owed to them by all the internees. During the war the transport facilities of the Medical Department very soon began to fail. Likewise, the transport of the Food Control. The transport of both these departments was virtually taken over, reformed, and kept going by American civilian volunteers. At the time of the surrender, these volunteers managed to salvage and keep control of a number of trucks and some gasoline. They, of course, had Red Cross badges. The trucks were marked with red crosses and all had been engaged in bona fide Red Cross work throughout the fighting. At considerable risk to themselves a number of these drivers remained out of interment and bought food for the internees and trucked it out to Stanley together with some bedding, hospital supplies and clothing. They kept this up until about six weeks before our repatriation. They were tolerated by the Japanese but, needless to say suffered many insults and indignities at their hands. Had they not continued, however, not only the American but all internees would have been in a terrible plight. The colonial Government wrote a letter to each of these drivers expressing its gratitude for their services but it was too risky to bring these letters out of the camp since the gendarmes were threatening dire punishment to anyone bearing letters out of camp. The gentlemen who continued this truck driving were Albert Fitch, Robert Henry, John Morton, Carl Neprud, Eugene Pawley, Charles Schafer and Charles Winter.
Dr. R. T. Own-Evans, a British subject, also joined this group. A.W. Gibson also assisted this group and rendered invaluable services doing liason work between communities.”
In July or August of 1942, came the wonderful report that Japn and the United States were planning to have an exchange of prisoners. Japanese in the U.S. were taken on the Swedish ship – the “Gripsholm” to Portuguese E. Africa where they were met by a Japanese shipload of American missionaries, business men, etc. from the Orient. Our SDA workers in the Philippines were not included in this repatriation as, at that time, the P.I. belonged to the U.S. Also, in Hong Kong, Mr. E.C. Wood, who had been in charge of building in China, had to remain in the Hong Kong Stanley prison camp because he was Canadian and a British citizen.
Almost all of us wives went to New York City to meet the Gripsholm that August. What a reunion! After short visits with each of our parents, we headed for Southern Missionary College for the following year, accepted it believing further graduate facilities were better in that area. Consequently, Chuck taught at W.M.C. (as it was then called) and also took graduate work at nearby University of Maryland. We were in Washington, D.C. for four years, the war was over, and we returned to China, this time going up to Chiao-tou Cheng, the former cite of the college before the various wars interrupted that school.
By this time, we had an important addition to our family – ten-month-old Robin Louise. The college had literally been town down leaving not so much as a brick of the formerly beautiful buildings. We lived in an American army Quonset Hut at an old silk farm from December, 1947 until our new homes were completed the following August of 1948.
On a Friday, the school officials received word from Nanking that the last American gunboat was leaving early Sunday morning. This was early November, 1948. We had been in our new homes less than four months. After Sabbath evening worship together, we all went to our homes to pack – one suitcase each person. Naturally, 2 ½ year-old Robin took up a lot of that space.
The men intended to stay on at the school and eventually made arrangements with an ocean-going freighter to come close to the town of ChenChiang. In rain and mud, the fellows trucked all household belongings, as well as students and faculty who wanted to go, to the waiting freighter, a tragic and sometimes hilarious experience.
Many days later, January 1949, when this overcrowded boat, with its motley group, including one pregnant cow, arrived in Hong Kong, the Immigration Department was horrified! None was allowed to disembark. The ship was sent up the river to Canton from where all were returned, by rail, in orderly fashion to Hon Kong. For two days, we families and kids had waited at the wharf only to have the boat finally pull out without so much as a glimpse of our husbands.
That school year was completed at Clearwater Bay campus, after which it was decided that it was not in the best interests of the students to be so closely connected with the “foreigners” and then return to mainland China. Some returned to their homes, some few came to the U.S. and eventually others went to Taiwan to college.
We returned to the U.S. in June 1949. Chuck was hired by the College of Medical Evangelists but “loaned” to Washington Missionary College the first 9 months as their Biology man had left rather unexpectedly. In November of 1950, we acquired our second baby girl, Christie, and in August of 1951 arrived in Loma Linda, where Chuck taught for 30 years in the Microbiology Department. Nineteen of those years he was chairman of the department and was still teaching full time, after officially retiring, when he suddenly died of a dissecting aortic aneurism.
The first time we went to China, we went only because we felt the Lord was calling us. The second time we went was also because we liked the Chinese people and had been happy there. Here in Loma Linda, since Chuck’s death, there have been many physicians coming for further study at the Medical Center. In 1983, I was asked, along with a number of others, to help some of these doctors with their English. Now, in 1995, I continue this work. We read and discuss from a “culture” book. In approximately the last 5 or 6 years, as conditions in China have changed, I also include a portion of the time with reading and discussing selected chapters from Maxwell’s “Bible Story” set. They like it!