Frederick Painton Obituary

Frederick Charles Painton Charleston - Frederick Charles Painton, 95, died on December 16 in Charleston. He was born in Indianapolis on July 6, 1926 and moved around a lot as a young boy, ultimately ending up in Westport, Connecticut. He went to Hotchkiss School in Connecticut on a scholarship and later to Yale University on the GI bill. He began his career as a wire service correspondent and earned awards for covering the Korean War. He is credited for naming the battle of Pork Chop Hill. His wire service years landed him in Paris in the early 50s, where he joyfully chased the notorious playboy Porfirio Rubirosa across the Riviera and got drunk with Humphrey Bogart at the Plaza Athene;e. When he returned to the United States, he was hired by U.S. News and World Report and sent back to Europe, this time as Rome bureau chief. From there, he chronicled the Hungary uprising, the war of independence in Algeria, and the chronic political fits of post-war Italy. By the early 60s, he was posted to Paris, where he reported on the rise of De Gaulle and early stirrings of the European Union. He eventually was hired by Time magazine to help write and edit its new European edition, based in Paris. In that job, he continued to document every twist in Europe's joyous (and sometimes treacherous) road back from war. Throughout his life, he was a great raconteur, a citizen always claimed by the culture in which he settled, mastering not only its language but its patois. He could recite from Cyrano in French, flirt with an Italian beauty in Italian, and even charm his way into the hermetically sealed society of the landed British (although he never forgot that the island's greatest talent was hypocrisy). He had so much fun: enlisting as a featherweight boxer while serving in Europe's occupying army so he could win a trip to Paris, traveling to California at the height of the counterculture to explain it to his readers back in Europe, pipe smoking with the Nouveaux Philosophes of Paris, and dancing Fred Astaire style at the drop of a note. He was dapper and loved being handsome; his tweeds and his aquiline nose were admired everywhere he went. He was the son of a famous pulp fiction writer and war correspondent (the letter found in Ernie Pyle's pocket on the battlefield was devoted to his father). That journalist, also named Fred Painton, made his reputation in the wars of the last century, and was embedded, among other things, with Patton's liberation tank army. He died on the job in the Pacific. Before that, he told his son: "You won't make a good soldier. You have too much imagination." And that was his great triumph. He landed in France as a young soldier and made his way to Germany, where he exposed corruption in the occupying army of a starving country. So he turned out to be a good enough soldier who was not afraid to see things and to keep exploring. He had the imagination that not only enjoyed tracking down the best sauerkraut in Paris, but that loved figuring out the key to Francois Mitterand's political resilience. It was an imagination that loved singing traditional French folk songs, but never failed to point out the intellectual provincialism of the French schools where he sent his daughters. Frederick Painton never stopped being curious and embracing the surprises of life and its people. He is survived by his beloved wife, Patsy Tidwell Painton of Charleston; his daughters, Priscilla Painton of Woodstock, Vermont, and Chatham, Massachusetts and Kathryn Painton of Walterboro, South Carolina and two grandchildren, Anthony Smith of New York City and Isabel Smith of Brewster, Mass. He is survived by his step-children, Julie Keaton of Memphis, Tenn., Lynne Stonesifer of Mt. Pleasant S.C., Eddie & Jane Tidwell of Bluffton, S.C., Tony & the late Dianne Wilks, and their children. He first wife, Patricia High Painton, died in 1996. Arrangements by J. Henry Stuhr, Inc. Downtown Chapel. Visit our guestbook at legacy.com/obituaries/charleston