Charles Frederick Russell. Charlie. My stepfather.
Perhaps it would be best to begin this by giving some background.
Charlie was the oldest child with one younger brother, Albert, and two younger sisters, Susan and Bertha. He was born in Manhattan but his father, a contractor, soon moved the family to Long Island where he built houses that he would later sell. They ended up in Lynbrook in a big, sprawling three family house where they lived on one side and rented out two apartments on the other side. Charlie would eventually buy this house after his mother died, paying his three siblings their market value shares, but that’s getting ahead in the narrative.
Charlie went to high school in Lynbrook and then to Gettysburg College, a private coed college in Pennsylvania. This was just before the Great Depression in 1930s America, and he graduated in 1930 when that Depression was…